The Bone Collector

might need. Got that?”
    “Yessir.”
    “Good. You want to remove those handcuffs from these officers now?”
    Dellray placidly unlocked the cuffs and slipped them into his pocket. He walked to a large van parked nearby. As Sachs picked up the evidence bag she saw him standing by himself at the edge of a pool of streetlight, his index finger lifted, stroking the cigarette behind his car. She wasted a moment’s sympathy on the feebie then turned and ran up the stairs, two at a time, after Jerry Banks and his rattlesnake.
    * * *
    “I have it figured out. Well, almost.”
    Sachs had just walked into Rhyme’s room when he made this pronouncement. He was quite pleased with himself.
    “Everything except the rattler and the glop.”
    She delivered the new evidence to Mel Cooper. The room had been transformed yet again and the tables were covered with new vials and beakers and pillboxes and lab equipment and boxes. It wasn’t much compared to the feds’ headquarters but, to Amelia Sachs, it felt oddly like home.
    “Tell me,” she said.
    “Tomorrow’s Sunday . . . pardon me—today’s Sunday. He’s going to burn down a church.”
    “How do you figure?”
    “The date.”
    “On the scrap of paper? What’s it mean?”
    “You ever hear of the anarchists?”
    “Little Russians in trench coats carrying around those bombs that look like bowling balls?” Banks said.
    “From the man who reads picture books,” Rhyme commented dryly. “Your Saturday-morning-cartoon roots are showing, Banks. Anarchism was an old social movement calling for the abolition of government. One anarchist, Enrico Malatesta—his shtick was ‘propaganda by deed.’ Translated that means murder and mayhem. One of his followers, an American named Eugene Lockworthy, lived in New York. One Sunday morning he bolted the doors of a church on the Upper East Side just after the service began and set the place on fire. Killed eighteen parishioners.”
    “And that happened on May 20, 1906?” Sachs asked.
    “Yep.”
    “I’m not going to ask how you figured that out.”
    Rhyme shrugged. “Obvious. Our unsub likes history, right? He gave us some matches so he’s telling us he’s planning arson. I just thought back to the city’s famous fires—the Triangle Shirt-waist, Crystal Palace, the General Slocum excursion boat . . . I checked the dates—May twentieth was the First Methodist Church fire.”
    Sachs asked, “But where? Same location as that church?”
    “Doubt it,” Sellitto said. “There’s a commercial high-rise there now. Eight twenty-three doesn’t like new places. I’ve got a couple men on it just in case but we’re sure he’s going for a church.”
    “And we think,” Rhyme added, “that he’s going to wait till a service starts.”
    “Why?”
    “For one thing, that’s what Lockworthy did,” Sellitto continued. “Also, we were thinking ’bout what Terry Dobyns was telling us—upping the ante. Going for multiple vics.”
    “So we’ve got a little more time. Until the service starts.”
    Rhyme looked up at the ceiling. “Now, how many churches are there in Manhattan?”
    “Hundreds.”
    “That was rhetorical, Banks. I mean—let’s keep looking over the clues. He’ll have to narrow it down some.”
    Footsteps on the stair.
    It was the twins once again.
    “We passed Fred Dellray outside.”
    “He wasn’t the least bit cordial.”
    “Or happy.”
    “Whoa, look at that.” Saul—Rhyme believed it was Saul; he’d forgotten who had the freckles—nodded at the snake. “I’ve seen more of those in one night than I ever want to again.”
    “Snakes?” Rhyme asked.
    “We were at Metamorphosis. It’s a—”
    “—very spooky place. Met the owner there. Weird guy. As you may’ve guessed.”
    “Long, long beard. Wish we hadn’t gone at night,” Bedding continued.
    “They sell taxidermied bats and insects. You wouldn’t believe some of the insects—”
    “Five inches long.”
    “—and critters like that one.” Saul nodded at the snake.
    “Scorpions, a lot of scorpions.”
    “Anyway, they had a break-in a month ago and guess what got took? A rattler’s skeleton.”
    “Reported?” Rhyme asked.
    “Yep.”
    “But total value of the perped merch was only a hundred bucks or so. So Larceny wasn’t like all-hands-on-board, you know.”
    “But tell them.”
    Saul nodded. “The snake wasn’t the only thing missing. Whoever broke in took a couple dozen bones.”
    “Human bones?”