The Bone Collector

teeth together as he thought.
    She pulled her clothes on, sat back, her fingers disappearing automatically into her scalp, scratching. “What, Rhyme? What is it?”
    “The church. It might not be in Harlem.” He repeated, “I made a mistake.”
    Just like with the perp who killed Colin Stanton’s family. In criminalistics you can nail down a hundred clues perfectly and it’s the one you miss that gets people killed.
    “What time is it?” she asked.
    “Quarter to six, a little after. Get the newspaper. The church-services schedule.”
    Sachs found the paper, thumbed through it. Then looked up. “What’re you thinking?”
    “Eight twenty-three’s obsessed with what’s old. If he’s after an old black church then he might not mean uptown. Philip Payton started the Afro-American Realty Company in Harlem in 1900. There were two other black settlements in the city. Downtown where thecourthouses are now and San Juan Hill. They’re mostly white now but . . . Oh, what the hell was I thinking of?”
    “Where’s San Juan Hill?”
    “Just north of Hell’s Kitchen. On the West Side. It was named in honor of all the black soldiers who fought in the Spanish-American War.”
    She read through the paper.
    “Downtown churches,” she said. “Well, in Battery Park there’s the Seamen’s Institute. A chapel there. They have services. Trinity. Saint Paul’s.”
    “That wasn’t the black area. Farther north and east.”
    “A Presbyterian church in Chinatown.”
    “Any Baptist. Evangelical?”
    “No, nothing in that area at all. There’s—Oh, hell.” With resignation in her eyes she sighed. “Oh, no.”
    Rhyme understood. “Sunrise service!”
    She was nodding. “Holy Tabernacle Baptist . . . Oh, Rhyme, there’s a gospel service starting at six. Fifty-ninth and Eleventh Avenue.”
    “That’s San Juan Hill! Call them!”
    She grabbed the phone and dialed the number. She stood, head down, fiercely plucking an eyebrow and shaking her head. “Answer, answer . . . Hell. It’s a recording. The minister must be out of his office.” She said into the receiver, “This is the New York Police Department. We have reason to believe there’s a firebomb in your church. Evacuate as fast as possible.” She hung up, pulled her shoes on.
    “Go, Sachs. You’ve got to get there. Now!”
    “Me?”
    “We’re closer than the nearest precinct. You can be there in ten minutes.”
    She jogged toward the door, slinging her utility belt around her waist.
    “I’ll call the precinct,” he yelled as she leapt down the stairs, hair a red cloud around her head. “And Sachs, if you ever wanted to drive fast, do it now.”
    * * *  
    The RRV wagon skidded into 81st Street, speeding west.
    Sachs burst into the intersection at Broadway, skidded hard and whacked a New York Post vending machine,sending it through Zabar’s window before she brought the wagon under control. She remembered all the crime scene equipment in the back. Rear-heavy vehicle, she thought; don’t corner at fifty.
    Then down Broadway. Brake at the intersections. Check left. Check right. Clear. Punch it!
    She peeled off on Ninth Avenue at Lincoln Center and headed south. I’m only—
    Oh, hell!
    A mad stop on screaming tires.
    The street was closed.
    A row of blue sawhorses blocked Ninth for a street fair later that morning. A banner proclaimed, Crafts and Delicacies of all Nations. Hand in hand, we are all one.
    Gaw . . . damn UN! She backed up a half block and got the wagon up to fifty before she slammed into the first sawhorse. Spreading portable aluminum tables and wooden display racks in her wake, she tore a swath through the deserted fair. Two blocks later the wagon broke through the southern barricade and she skidded west on Fifty-ninth, using far more of the sidewalk than she meant to.
    There was the church, a hundred yards away.
    Parishioners on the steps—parents, little girls in frilly white and pink dresses, young boys in dark suits and white shirts, their hair in gangsta knobs or fades.
    And from a basement window, a small puff of gray smoke.
    Sachs slammed the accelerator to the floor, the engine roaring.
    Grabbing the radio. “RRV Two to Central, K?”
    And in the instant it took her to glance down at the Motorola to make sure the volume was up, a big Mercedes slipped out of the alley directly into her path.
    A fast glimpse of the family inside, eyes wide in horror, as the father slammed on the brakes.
    Sachs instinctively