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The bone collector : Deaver, Jeffery : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive.The Bone Collector (Lincoln Rhyme, #1) |
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Alcott Louisa May. Belknap Lisa. Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume , December 10, Burnand Francis Cowley. A Middy of the Slave Squadron. Collingwood Harry. The Maine Massacre. De Wetering Janwillem Van. The Evolution of Expression Vol.
Emerson Charles Wesley. National Character. Burt Katharine Newlin. An Anarchist. Conrad Joseph. Registration through social services. Log in or Sign up. What is that? A circle of overturned earth, a small tree branch sticking out of the top? It looked like— Oh, my good Lord She shivered at the sight. Felt the nausea rise, prickling her skin like a wave of flame. He hoped the victim was dead. She ran toward an iron ladder that led down from the sidewalk to the roadbed.
She reached for the railing but stopped just in time. Okay, we do it the hard way. Breathing deeply to dull the pain in her joints, she began climbing down the rock face itself, slipping her issue shoes—polished like silver for the first day of her new assignment—into crevices cut in the stone. She jumped the last four feet to the roadbed and ran to the grave.
Sachs dropped to her knees and began to dig. Dirt flying under her dog-paddling hands, she noticed that the uncut fingers were splayed, stretched beyond where they could normally bend.
Which told her that the vic had been alive when the last shovelful of dirt was spooned onto the face. And maybe still was. Sachs dug furiously into the loosely packed earth, cutting her hand on a bottle shard, her dark blood mixing into the darker earth. And then she came to the hair and a forehead below it, a cyanotic bluish-gray from the lack of oxygen.
Digging further until she could see the dull eyes and the mouth, which had twisted into a horrible grin as the vic had tried in the last few seconds to stay above the rising tide of black earth. Despite the ring. He was a heavy-set man in his fifties. As dead as the soil he floated in. She could think of absolutely nothing for a full minute. Then: Come on, honey.
You know what to do. D is for Detain material witnesses and suspects. A is for Assess the crime scene. P is for What was P again? She lowered her head to the mike. Homicide, K. Need detectives, CS, bus and tour doctor.
Perp in custody, K? The incongruous ring. The eyes. And the grin A shudder ripped through her body. But let her think of confinement Which was why Sachs walked fast when she walked and why she drove cars like light itself. She heard a sound and cocked her head. A rumble, deep, getting louder. Scraps of paper blowing along the roadbed of the tracks. Dust dervishes swirling about her like angry ghosts. Then a low wail Five-foot-nine Patrol Officer Amelia Sachs found herself facing down a thirty-ton Amtrak locomotive, the red, white and blue slab of steel approaching at a determined ten miles an hour.
The engineer ignored her. Sachs jogged onto the roadbed and planted herself right in the middle of the track, spread her stance and waved her arms, signaling him to stop. The locomotive squealed to a halt. The engineer stuck his head out the window. He asked her what she meant. She thought he looked woefully young to be driving such a big train. Please shut off the engine. She was looking up at a gap in the chain-link on the west side of the train viaduct, at the top, near Eleventh Avenue.
That would have been one way to get the body here without being seen—parking on Eleventh and dragging the body through the narrow alley to the cliff. On Thirty-seventh, the cross street, he could be spotted from two dozen apartment windows. Just leave it right there. They run all the time. Or somebody. Have them stop the southbound trains too. Gimme a ticket? The hall was bustling with crowds—spectators and press.
A huge banner proclaimed, Welcome UN Delegates! But earlier this morning, when the street was deserted, the perp could easily have found a parking space along here and carried the body to the tracks undetected. Sachs strode to Eleventh, surveyed the six-lane avenue, which was jammed with traffic.
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. P is for Protect the crime scene. A short time later she heard the sirens join the cacophony as the first of the emergency vehicles arrived.
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. Sachs had foundered for a few years before attending the academy. What were you thinking of? You closed the street to protect the crime scene? He could be seen too easily from those apartments.
See, there? Eleventh seemed like a better choice. There were no footprints on that side of the tracks, and two sets going to the ladder that leads up to Thirty-seven.
And the train? I thought that a train going through the scene might disturb evidence. Or something. There were officers nearby but they were busily ignoring the dressing-down.
A schoolmarm. I, all the way to St. Those are likely means of escape. The two of them were exactly the same height, though his heels were higher. The train tracks were fifty feet from the vic and the street you closed was a good two hundred feet away and thirty above. Crime scene work is a balance.
I say this constructively. For your edification. Effective as of noon today. But for the record, it was your decision to stop the train and close the street. Oh, please You hear me? Every single driver who passed her scowled or muttered something. Sachs glanced at her watch. An hour to go. The light outside, midmorning, was brilliant and the air looked fiercely hot. Then cocked his head at the sound of the buzzer of the door downstairs. Rhyme observed that its talons were bloody.
A piece of yellow flesh dangled from the black nutshell beak. The falcon dropped the meat into the upturned mouth of the fuzzy blue hatchling. Except maybe God Himself. He heard the footsteps come up the stairs slowly. Look, bloodstains on your windowsill. Can you see them? Blue-gray like a fish, iridescent. Her head scanned the sky. Do they mate for life? The young man was stalling now and it irritated Rhyme. He tried to recall when his last visitor had been here.
It must have been three months ago. That reporter maybe or some distant cousin. And Blaine had been here several times. But she of course was not a vis-i-tor. His reaction was to open the window. Immediate gratification. You can turn the air conditioner down. But then they always glared.
They remained on the ledge, lording over their domain of anemic ginkgo trees and alternate-side-of-the-street parkers. Rhyme repeated. Thom examined the room. He was content here, as it was. This room, which he called his office, was on the second floor of his gothic townhouse on the Upper West Side of the city, overlooking Central Park. The room was large, twenty-by-twenty, and virtually every one of those feet was occupied.
Sometimes he closed his eyes, playing a game, and tried to detect the smell of the different objects in the room here. The thousands of books and magazines, the Tower of Pisa stacks of photocopies, the hot transistors of the TV, the dust-frosted lightbulbs, the cork bulletin boards. Vinyl, peroxide, latex, upholstery. Three different kinds of single-malt Scotch. Falcon shit. Ernie Banks. No, he was a baseball player, right?
You really should let me clean. You never notice how filthy someplace is till people come to call. My, that sounds quaint. How does this sound? Thom was speaking of the room but Rhyme supposed he meant his boss too. His eyes were narrow, deep brown, and set in a face that Blaine had told him on a number of occasions, passionate and otherwise, was handsome. Have you scared off the bird?
I was dozing earlier. And you were out. But then I dozed off. I was sound asleep. Did you check messages? Nothing from him. What do you say? You can do that. You know, they have this thing—call waiting. You can get two calls at once. I wish we had that. What does my old friend Lon want? And his friend the baseball player? The good-looking young man ran his hand through his blond hair. He wore tan slacks and a white shirt, with a blue floral tie, immaculately knotted. The number of those who quit was exactly equal to the firees.
Without asking me. Thank you very much. As they entered the room Rhyme spoke first. Than the grip of his short, strong fingers on her biceps. The taxi driver, still in his ski mask, led her down the grimy, wet corridor, past rows of ducts and piping. They were in the basement of an office building.
She had no idea where. If I could talk to him A negotiator. You want money? She thought this a dozen times, trying to catch his eye, as if she could actually force the words into his thoughts.
Pleeeeeeeease, she begged silently, and began thinking about the mechanics of cashing in her k and giving him her retirement fund. She remembered last night: The man turning back from the fireworks, dragging them from the cab, handcuffing them.
First over rough cobblestones and broken asphalt then smooth roads then rough again. She heard the whir of wheels on a bridge. More turns, more rough roads. Finally, the cab stopped and the driver got out and seemed to open a gate or some doors.
He drove into a garage, she thought. Then the cab trunk opened and the man pulled her out. He yanked the diamond ring off her finger and pocketed it. Then he led her past walls of spooky faces, faded paintings of blank eyes staring at her, a butcher, a devil, three sorrowful children—painted on the crumbling plaster.
Dragged her down into a moldy basement and dumped her on the floor. He clopped upstairs, leaving her in the dark, surrounded by a sickening smell—rotting flesh, garbage. A sharp explosion. Then more troubled sleep. Wherever here was. They now walked into a dim basement room. In the center was a thick black pipe; he handcuffed her to it then gripped her feet and pulled them out straight in front of her, propping her in a sitting position.
He crouched and tied her legs together with thin rope—it took several minutes; he was wearing leather gloves. Then he rose and gazed at her for a long moment, bent down and tore her blouse open.
He walked around behind her and she gasped, feeling his hands on her shoulders, probing, squeezing her shoulder blades. Crying, pleading through the tape. Knowing what was coming. The hands moved down, along her arms, and then under them and around the front of her body. No, as the hands spidered across her skin they seemed to be searching for her ribs. He prodded them and stroked.
He gripped her tight and caressed some more, pressing hard, feeling the give of the bone. He stood. She heard receding footsteps. For a long moment there was silence except for the groans of air conditioners and elevators. Then she barked a frightened grunt at a sound right behind her. A repetitive noise. What was it? Listening to the rhythmic sound, over and over and over.
Saturday morning in the small bungalow in Bedford, Tennessee. As she cried at this memory she listened to the sound and wondered why on earth he was sweeping the floor and with such careful, precise strokes of the broom.
He saw surprise and discomfort on their faces. Lon Sellitto and young Banks Jerry, not Ernie sat where Rhyme gestured with his bush-crowned head: twin dusty, uncomfortable rattan chairs. Banks had no benchmark against which to judge what he was seeing but he was shocked nonetheless.
The sloppy room, the vagrant gazing at them suspiciously. The smell too certainly—the visceral aroma surrounding the creature Lincoln Rhyme now was. He immensely regretted letting them up. Thom crested the stairs and Rhyme preempted him.
Such a goddamn Martha Stewart. Silence for a moment. Large, rumpled Sellitto—a twentyyear vet—glanced down into a box beside the bed and started to speak. And what a charming cowlick in his hair! The more worn the world gets, Rhyme reflected, the younger its inhabitants seem to be.
But I meant the picture book. The one a couple years ago. It was mostly words, in fact. Did you read them? A huge stack of remaindered volumes of The Scenes of the Crime sat against one wall of his room. Show you the pictures? Strip his sleeve and show his scars and say these wounds I had with Lincoln Rhyme?
Well, I can give him even less to smile about if he likes. And what does he have in there? And looked at the clock. Running the Central Investigation and Resource Division was one of the most prestigious jobs in the department. Thom scowled but Sellitto missed the irony. Or more likely ignored it. We need some help. The stack of papers landed on the bedside table. And why, he wondered, does her voluptuous apparition keep rising today? He now saved the document on the disk.
Silence filled the room as he entered the commands with a single finger. Some help. From me. I heard. It was a question people tended to avoid when they saw Lincoln Rhyme. The answer risked being a very complicated, and almost certainly an unpleasant, one. And you? One he had no desire to hear. Sellitto was a workhorse. He was one of the hundred or so first-grade detectives on the force and had been for years—he got the grade when they were handed out for merit not just time served.
The Heights. I walk to work sometimes. You know those diets I was always on? Or the Sellitto of fifteen years ago for that matter. For a Well past midmorning.
Tardiness is inexcusable in a man of medicine. Thom appeared at the doorway with a coffeepot. Prick, Rhyme mouthed. But the atrophying had stopped not long after the accident and his first physical therapists had exhausted him with exercise. Thom too, who may have been a prick at times and an old mother hen at others, was a damn good PT.
He put Rhyme through passive ROM exercises every day. Carefully checking the spasticity as he kept the arms and legs in a constant cycle of abduction and adduction. The rich ones, at least.
The lucky ones. Blaine told me you called her Katie Couric one night when you were making love. Never made it home. This cab was driving down the BQE in Queens. White male and female passenger in the back seat. Looked like they were trying to break a window out. Pounding on the glass. Nobody got tags or medallion. Any look at the driver? Rhyme was furious with Dr. William Berger. Sellitto exhaled long and loud. They found this morning. All of it. Down to the bone. It was bloody, right?
Then AIDS, hepatitis. She goes by T. Works for Morgan Stanley. A school j ring of some sort. The boy was too polished to be just! No whiff of army about him. A homicide detective? What was the world coming to? The young cop cupped his coffee in hands that shook sporadically. He tended not to waste controls on things like heating and air-conditioning; he reserved it for necessities like lights, the computer and his page-turning frame.
But when the room got too cold his nose ran. And we want you to review the CS report. What could I possibly tell you? Yours truly. Forensic Science Review. American College of Forensic Examiners Journal. CRC Press Forensics. Journal of the International Institute of Forensic Science.
Rhyme squelched the burst of laughter that felt alien inside him. His guard had slipped and irritation had dissolved into amusement. He momentarily regretted that he and Sellitto had drifted apart. Then he shot the feeling dead. Ambassadors, heads of state. You heard about that thing in London two days ago? Whet his appetite. Especially the control panel. It looked like something off the space shuttle and cost just about as much.
Well, we find him dead. Bullet was a. This Banks seems smart, Rhyme thought, and all he suffers from is youth, which he might or might not outgrow. Lincoln Rhyme believed he himself had never been young. It was wiped. Did a good job of it. The footprints go to the grave and back to the ladder. He weighed over two hundred pounds. There was no blood trail anywhere around the ladder or the path to the grave. Read the report. He glanced at the first page then read it carefully.
Moved his ring finger a precise millimeter to the left. A rubber wand turned the page. Thinking: Well, this is odd. When he heard the vic was one of the taxi people he came down and took over. For a minute the unimaginative words of cop writing held his interest. Then the doorbell rang and his heart galloped with a great shudder. His eyes slipped to Thom. They were cold and made clear that the time for banter was over. Thom nodded and went downstairs immediately. All thoughts of cabdrivers and PE and kidnapped bankers vanished from the sweeping mind of Lincoln Rhyme.
At last. At long last. It was good seeing you again. Tell us what you think? Quads like Rhyme, who had full head-and-neck movement, could activate a dozen controls just by threedimensional movements of the head.
But Rhyme shunned headrests. There were so few sensuous pleasures left to him that he was unwilling to abdicate the comfort of nestling his head against his two-hundred-dollar down pillow.
The visitors had tired him out. Not even noon, and all he wanted to do was sleep. His neck muscles throbbed in agony. The important one is the other one—the primary scene. His house. The driver was the Bone Collector, a ruthless kidnapper.
As the minutes count down to each new death, Rhyme must decipher the gruesome clues left by the killer at each scene. Slowly the crimanlist begins to tighten the noose. But it appears the Bone Collector has other plans.
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