The Bone Collector

on her face ceased as her body went numb, as numb as Lincoln Rhyme’s. Her mind began to shut down.
    Blackness, blackness. No words from her father. Nothing from Nick . . . No dreams of downshifting from five to four to goose the speedometer into three digits.
    Blackness.
    Giving up the  . . .
    The mass sinking down onto her, pushing, pushing. Seeing only one image: The hand rising out of the grave yesterday morning, waving for mercy. When no mercy would be given.
    Waving for her to follow.
    Rhyme, I’ll miss you.
    Giving up  . . .

THIRTY-FOUR
    S omething struck her forehead. Hard. She felt the thump but no pain.
    What, what? His shovel? A brick? Maybe in an instant of compassion 823’d decided that this slow death was more than anyone could bear and was striking for her throat to sever her veins.
    Another blow, and another. She couldn’t open her eyes, but she was aware of light growing around her. Colors. And air. She forced the mass of dirt from her mouth and sucked in tiny breaths, all she could manage. Began coughing in a loud bray, retching, spitting.
    Her lids sprang open and through tearing eyes she found herself looking up at the muddy vision of Lon Sellitto, kneeling over her, beside two EMS medics, one of whom dug into her mouth with latex-clad fingers and pulled out more gunk, while the other readied an oxygen mask and green tank.
    Sellitto and Banks continued to uncover her body, shoving the dirt away with their muscular hands. They pulled her up, leaving the robe behind like a shed skin. Sellitto, old divorcé that he was, looked chastely away from her body as he put his jacket around her shoulders. Young Jerry Banks did look of course but she loved him anyway.
    “Did . . . you. . . ?” she wheezed, then surrendered to a racking cough.
    Sellitto glanced expectantly at Banks, who was the more breathless of the two. He must’ve done the most running after the unsub. The young detective shook his head. “Got away.”
    Sitting up, she inhaled oxygen for a moment.
    “How?” she wheezed. “How’d you know?”
    “Rhyme,” he answered. “Don’t ask me how. He called in 10-13s for everybody on the team. When he heard we were okay he sent us over here ASAP.”
    Then the numbness left, snap, in a flash. And for the first time she realized what had nearly happened. She dropped the oxygen mask, backed away in panic, tears streaming, her panicky keening growing louder and louder. “No, no, no . . .”
    Slapping her arms and thighs, frantic, trying to shake off the horror clinging to her like a teeming swarm of bees.
    “Oh God oh God . . . No . . .”
    “Sachs?” Banks asked, alarmed. “Hey, Sachs?”
    The older detective waved his partner away. “It’s okay.” He kept his arm around her shoulders as she dropped to all fours and vomited violently, sobbing, sobbing, gripping the dirt desperately between her fingers as if she wanted to strangle it.
    Finally Sachs calmed and sat back on her naked haunches. She began laughing, softly at first then louder and louder, hysterical, astonished to find that the skies had opened and it had been raining—huge hot summer drops—and she hadn’t even realized it.
      * * *
    Arm around his shoulders. Face pressed against his. They stayed that way for a long moment.
    “Sachs . . . Oh, Sachs.”
    She stepped away from the Clinitron and scooted an old armchair from the corner of the room. Sachs—wearing navy sweatpants and a Hunter College T-shirt—flopped down into the chair and dangled her exquisite legs over the arm like a schoolgirl.
    “Why us, Rhyme? Why’d he come after us?” Her voice was a raspy whisper from the dirt she’d swallowed.
    “Because the people he kidnapped aren’t the real victims. We are.”
    “Who’s we? ” she asked.
    “I’m not sure. Society maybe. Or the city. Or the UN. Cops. I went back and reread his bible—the chapter onJames Schneider. Remember Terry’s theory about why the unsub’d been leaving the clues?”
    Sellitto said, “Sort of making us accessories. To share the guilt. Make it easier for him to kill.”
    Rhyme nodded but said, “I don’t think that’s the reason though. I think the clues were a way to attack us. Every dead vic was a loss for us.”
    In her old clothes, hair pulled back in a ponytail, Sachs looked more beautiful than any time in the past two days. But her eyes were tin. She’d be reliving every shovelful of dirt, he supposed, and Rhyme found the thought of