The Bone Collector

Rhyme suddenly coughed deeply. He cleared his throat, caught his breath. “It’s my fault. Do whatever you want with me.”
    “No, it’s all of you. It’s—”
    “Please. You can’t—” Rhyme began to cough again. It turned into a violent racking. He managed to control it.
    Stanton glanced at him.
    “You can’t hurt them. I’ll do whatever—” Rhyme’s voice seized. His head flew back, his eyes bulged.
    And Lincoln Rhyme’s breath stopped completely. His head thrashed, his shoulders shivered violently. The tendons in his neck tightened like steel cords.
    “Rhyme!” Stanton cried.
    Sputtering, saliva shooting from his lips, Rhyme trembled once, twice, an earthquake seemed to ripple through his entire limp body. His head fell back, blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.
    “No!” Stanton shouted. Slamming his hands into Rhyme’s chest. “You can’t die!”
    The doctor lifted Rhyme’s lids, revealing only whites.
    Stanton tore open Thom’s medicine box and prepared a blood-pressure hypodermic, injected the drug. He yanked the pillow off the bed and pulled Rhyme flat. He tilted back Rhyme’s lolling head, wiped the lips and placed his mouth on Rhyme’s, breathing hard into the unresponsive lungs.
    “No!” Stanton raged. “I won’t let you die! You can’t! ”
    No response.
    Again. He checked the unmoving eyes.
    “Come on! Come on! ”
    Another breath. Pounding on the still chest.
    Then he backed up, frozen with panic and shock, staring, staring, watching the man die in front of him.
    Finally he bent forward and one last time exhaled deeply into Rhyme’s mouth.
    And it was when Stanton turned his head and lowered his ear to listen for the faint sound of breath, any faint exhalation, that Rhyme’s head shot forward like a striking snake. He closed his teeth on Stanton’s neck, tearing through the carotid artery and gripping a portion of the man’s own spine.
    Down to  . . .
    Stanton screamed and scrabbled backwards, sliding Rhyme off the bed on top of him. Together they fell in a pile on the floor. The hot coppery blood gushed and gushed, filling Rhyme’s mouth.
    . . . the bone.
    His lungs, his killer lungs, had already gone for a minute without air but he refused to loosen his grip now to gasp for breath, ignoring the searing pain from inside his cheek where he’d bit into the tender skin, bloodying it to give credence to his sham attack of dysreflexia. He growled in rage—seeing Amelia Sachs buried in dirt, seeing the steam spew over T.J. Colfax’s body—and he shook his head, feeling the snap of bone and cartilage.
    Pummeling Rhyme’s chest, Stanton screamed again,kicking to get away from the monster that had socketed itself to him.
    But Rhyme’s grip was unbreakable. It was as if the spirits of all the dead muscles throughout his body had risen into his jaw.
    Stanton clawed his way to the bedside table and managed to grab his knife. He jabbed it into Rhyme. Once, twice. But the only places he could reach were the criminalist’s legs and arms. It’s pain that incapacitates and pain was one thing to which Lincoln Rhyme was immune.
    The vise of his jaws closed harder and Stanton’s scream was cut off as his windpipe went. He plunged the knife deep into Rhyme’s arm. It stopped when it hit bone. He started to draw it out to strike again but the madman’s body froze then spasmed violently once, then again, and suddenly went completely limp.
    Stanton collapsed to the floor, pulling Rhyme after him. The criminalist’s head slammed onto the oak with a loud crack. Yet Rhyme wouldn’t let go. He held tight and continued to crush the man’s neck, shaking, tearing the flesh like a hungry lion crazed by blood and by the immeasurable satisfaction of a lust fulfilled.

V
WHEN YOU MOVE
THEY CAN’T
GETCHA
    “A physician’s duty is not just to extend life, it is to end suffering.”
    —DR. JACK KEVORKIAN

THIRTY-SEVEN
    Monday, 7:15 p.m., to Monday, 10:00 p.m.
     
    I t was nearly sunset when Amelia Sachs walked through his doorway.
    She was no longer in sweats. Or uniform. She wore jeans and a forest-green blouse. Her beautiful face sported several scratches Rhyme didn’t recognize, though given the events of the past three days he guessed the wounds weren’t self-inflicted.
    “Yuck,” she said, walking around the portion of the floor where Stanton and Polling had died. It had been mopped with bleach—with the perp body-bagged, forensics became moot—but the pink