The Bone Collector

watches the vics because he has to. ”
    Because it’s his nature.
    “What do you mean?”
    “Come on!”
    Rhyme sipped twice into the straw control, which turned the Arrow wheelchair around. Then puffed hard and he started forward.
    He wheeled to the sidewalk, sipped hard into the straw to stop. He squinted as he looked all around him. “He wants to see his victims. And I’m betting he wanted to see the parishioners too. From someplace he thought was safe. Where he didn’t bother to sweep up afterwards.”
    He was gazing across the street at the only secluded vantage point on the block: the outdoor patio of a restaurant opposite the church.
    “There! Sweep it clean, Sachs.”
    She nodded, slipped a new clip into her Glock, grabbed evidence bags, a pair of pencils and the Dustbuster. He saw her run across the street and work her way up the steps carefully, examining them. “He was here,” she shouted. “There’s a glove print. And the shoeprint—it’s worn just like the other ones.”
    Yes! Rhyme thought. Oh, this felt good. The warm sun, the air, the spectators. And the excitement of the chase.
    When you move they can’t getcha.
    Well, if we move faster, maybe we can.
    Rhyme happened to glance at the crowd and saw that some people were staring at him. But far more were watching Amelia Sachs.
    For fifteen minutes she pored over the scene and when she returned she held up a small evidence bag.
    “What did you find, Sachs? His driver’s license? His birth certificate?”
    “Gold,” she said, smiling. “I found some gold.”

THIRTY
    C ome on, people,” Rhyme called. “We’ve got to move on this one. Before he gets the girl to the next scene. I mean move! ”
    Thom did a sitting transfer to get Rhyme from the Storm Arrow back into bed, perching him momentarily on a sliding board and then easing him back into the Clinitron. Sachs glanced at the wheelchair elevator that had been built into one of the bedroom closets—it was the one he hadn’t wanted her to open when he was directing her to the stereo and CDs.
    Rhyme lay still for a moment, breathing deeply from the exertion.
    “The clues’re gone,” he reminded them. “There’s no way we can figure out where the next scene is. So we’re going for the big one—his safe house.”
    “You think you can find it?” Sellitto asked.
    Do we have a choice? Rhyme thought, and said nothing.
    Banks hurried up the stairs. He hadn’t even stepped into the bedroom before Rhyme blurted, “What did they say? Tell me. Tell me.”
    Rhyme knew that the tiny fleck of gold that Sachs had found was beyond the capabilities of Mel Cooper’s impromptu lab. He’d asked the young detective to speed it down to the FBI’s regional PERT office and have it analyzed.
    “They’ll call us in the next half hour.”
    “Half hour? ” Rhyme muttered. “Didn’t they give it priority?”
    “You bet they did. Dellray was there. You should’ve seen him. He ordered every other case put on hold andsaid if the metallurgy report wasn’t in your hands ASAP there’d be one mean mother—you get the picture—reaming their—you get the rest of the picture.”
    “Rhyme,” Sachs said, “there’s something else the Ganz woman said that might be important. He told her he’d let her go if she agreed to let him flail her foot.”
    “Flail?”
    “Cut the skin off it.”
    “ Flay, ” Rhyme corrected.
    “Oh. Anyway, he didn’t do anything. She said it was—in the end—like he couldn’t bring himself to cut her.”
    “Just like the first scene—the man by the railroad tracks,” Sellitto offered.
    “Interesting . . .” Rhyme reflected. “I thought he’d cut the vic’s finger to discourage anybody from stealing the ring. But maybe not. Look at his behavior: Cutting the finger off the cabbie and carrying it around. Cutting the German girl’s arm and leg. Stealing the bones and the snake skeleton. Listening while he broke Everett’s finger . . . There’s something about the way he sees his victims. Something . . .”
    “Anatomical?”
    “Exactly, Sachs.”
    “Except the Ganz woman,” Sellitto said.
    “My point,” Rhyme said. “He could’ve cut her and still kept her alive for us. But something stopped him. What?”
    Sellitto said, “What’s different about her? Can’t be that she’s a woman. Or she’s from out of town. So was the German girl.”
    “Maybe he didn’t want to hurt her in front of her daughter,” Banks said.
    “No,” Rhyme