The Bone Collector

like the drill sergeant Rhyme recalled he’d been.
    “So I can tell the brass there’s a chance of getting the vic in time?” Polling asked.
    “I think so, yes.”
    The captain made a call and wandered to the corner of the room as he talked. When he hung up he grunted, “The mayor. The chief’s with ’im. There’s gonna be a press conference in an hour and I gotta be there to make sure their dicks’re in their pants and their flies’re zipped. Anything more I can tell the big boys?”
    Sellitto glanced at Rhyme, who shook his head.
    “Not yet,” the detective said.
    Polling gave Sellitto his cellular phone number and left, literally jogging out the door.
    A moment later a skinny, balding man in his thirties ambled up the stairs. Mel Cooper was as goofy-looking as ever, the nerdy neighbor in a sitcom. He was followed by two younger cops carrying a steamer trunk and twosuitcases that seemed to weigh a thousand pounds each. The officers deposited their heavy loads and left.
    “Mel.”
    “Detective.” Cooper walked up to Rhyme and gripped his useless right hand. The only physical contact today with any of his guests, Rhyme noted. He and Cooper had worked together for years. With degrees in organic chemistry, math and physics, Cooper was an expert both in identification—friction-ridge prints, DNA and forensic reconstruction—and in PE analysis.
    “How’s the world’s foremost criminalist?” Cooper asked him.
    Rhyme scoffed good-naturedly. The title had been bestowed on him by the press some years ago, after the surprising news that the FBI had selected him—a city cop—as adviser in putting together PERT, their Physical Evidence Response Team. Not satisfied with “forensic scientist” or “forensic specialist,” reporters dubbed Rhyme a “criminalist.”
    The word had actually been around for years, first applied in the United States to the legendary Paul Leland Kirk, who ran the UC Berkeley School of Criminology. The school, the first in the country, had been founded by the even more legendary Chief August Vollmer. The handle had recently become chic, and when techs around the country sidled up to blondes at cocktail parties now they described themselves as criminalists, not forensic scientists.
    “Everybody’s nightmare,” Cooper said, “you get into a cab and turns out there’s a psycho behind the wheel. And the whole world’s watching the Big Apple ’causa that conference. Wondered if they might not bring you out of retirement for this one.”
    “How’s your mother?” Rhyme asked.
    “Still complaining about every ache and pain. Still healthier than me.”
    Cooper lived with the elderly woman in the Queens bungalow where he’d been born. His passion was ballroom dancing—the tango his specialty. Cop gossip being what it is, there’d been speculation around IRD as to the man’s sexual preference. Rhyme had had no interestin his employees’ personal lives but had been as surprised as everyone else to finally meet Greta, Cooper’s steady girlfriend, a stunning Scandinavian who taught advanced mathematics at Columbia.
    Cooper opened the large trunk, which was padded with velvet. He lifted out parts for three large microscopes and began assembling them.
    “Oh, house current.” He glanced at the outlets, disappointed. He pushed his metal-rimmed glasses up on his nose.
    “That’s because it’s a house, Mel.”
    “I assumed you lived in a lab. Wouldn’t have been surprised.”
    Rhyme stared at the instruments, gray and black, battered. Similar to the ones he’d lived with for over fifteen years. A standard compound microscope, a phase-contrast ’scope, and a polarized-light model. Cooper opened the suitcases, which contained a Mr. Wizard assortment of bottles and jars and scientific instruments. In a flash, words came back to Rhyme, words that had once been part of his daily vocabulary. EDTA vacuum blood-collection tubes, acetic acid, orthotolidine, luminol reagent, Magna-Brush, Ruhemann’s purple phenomenon . . .
    The skinny man looked around the room. “Looks just like your office used to, Lincoln. How do you find anything? Say, I need some room here.”
    “Thom.” Rhyme moved his head toward the least cluttered table. They moved aside magazines and papers and books, revealing a tabletop Rhyme had not seen in a year.
    Sellitto gazed at the crime scene report. “Whatta we call the unsub? We don’t have a case number yet.”
    Rhyme glanced at Banks. “Pick a