The Bone Collector

down.
    Sachs drew her Glock and when the red cylinder was halfway down, fired one round.
    The extinguisher erupted in a huge booming explosion; pieces of red shrapnel from the casing hissed over their heads. The mushroom cloud of carbon dioxide andpowder settled over the stairs and momentarily dampened most of the flames.
    “Now, move!” Sachs shouted.
    Together they took the steps two at a time, Sachs carrying her own weight and half the woman’s, and pushed through the doorway into the inferno on the first floor. They hugged the wall as they stumbled toward the exit, while above them stained-glass windows burst and rained hot shards—the colorful bodies of Jesus and Matthew and Mary and God Himself—down upon the bent backs of the escaping women.

TWENTY-NINE
    F orty minutes later, Sachs had been salved and bandaged and stitched and had sucked so much pure oxygen she felt like she was tripping. She sat beside Carole Ganz. They stared at what was left of the church. Which was virtually nothing. Only two walls remained and, curiously, a portion of the third floor, jutting into space above a lunar landscape of ash and debris piled in the basement.
    “Pammy, Pammy . . .” Carole moaned, then retched and spit. She took her own oxygen mask to her face, leaned back, weary and in pain.
    Sachs examined another alcohol-soaked rag with which she was wiping the blood from her face. The rags had started out brown and were now merely pink. The wounds weren’t serious—a cut on her forehead, swatches of second-degree burns on her arm and hand. Her lips were no longer flawless, however; the lower one had been cut deeply in the crash, the tear requiring three stitches.
    Carole was suffering from smoke inhalation and a broken wrist. An impromptu cast covered her left wrist and she cradled it, head down, speaking through clenched teeth. Every breath was an alarming wheeze. “That son of a bitch.” Coughing. “Why . . . Pammy? Why on earth? A three-year-old child!” She wiped angry tears with the back of her uninjured arm.
    “Maybe he doesn’t want to hurt her. So he just brought you to the church.”
    “No,” she spat out angrily. “He doesn’t care about her. He’s sick! I saw the way he looked at her. I’m going to kill him. I’m going to fucking kill him.” The harsh words dissolved into a harsher bout of coughing.
    Sachs winced in pain. She’d unconsciously dug a nail into a burned fingertip. She pulled out her watchbook. “Can you tell me what happened?”
    Between bouts of sobbing and throaty coughs, Carole told her the story of the kidnapping.
    “You want me to call anybody?” Sachs asked. “Your husband?”
    Carole didn’t answer. She drew her knees up to her chin, hugged herself, wheezing roughly.
    With her scalded right hand Sachs squeezed the woman’s biceps and repeated the question.
    “My husband . . .” She stared at Sachs with an eerie look. “My husband’s dead.”
    “Oh, I’m sorry.”
    Carole was getting groggy from the sedative and a woman medic helped her into the ambulance to rest.
    Sachs looked up and saw Lon Sellitto and Jerry Banks running toward her from the burned-out church.
    “Jesus, officer.” Sellitto was surveying the carnage in the street. “What about the girl?”
    Sachs nodded. “He’s still got her.”
    Banks said, “You okay?”
    “Nothing serious.” Sachs glanced toward the ambulance. “The vic, Carole, she doesn’t have any money, no place to stay. She’s in town to work for the UN. Think you could make some calls, detective? See if they could set her up for a while?”
    “Sure,” Sellitto said.
    “And the planted clues?” Banks asked. He winced as he touched a bandage over his right eyebrow.
    “Gone,” Sachs said. “I saw them. In the basement. Couldn’t get to them in time. Burned up and buried.”
    “Oh, man,” Banks muttered. “What’s going to happen to the little girl?”
    What does he think’s going to happen to her?
    She walked back toward the wreck of the IRD wagon, found the headset. She pulled it on and was about to call in a patch request to Rhyme but hesitated then lifted off the mike. What could he tell her anyway? She looked at the church. How can you work a crime scene when there is no scene?
    She was standing with her hands on her hips, staring out onto the smoldering hulk of the building, when she heard a sound she couldn’t place. A whining, mechanical sound. She paid no attention to it until she was aware of