The Bone Collector

he tipped the stone just to make sure it got picked up. It left an oil impression. Like a friction ridge.”
    “Why would he do that?” Sachs asked.
    Once more miffed that nobody seemed to be picking up these points as fast as he was, Rhyme explained tersely, “He’s telling us two things. First, he’s making sure we know the victim’s a woman. In case we didn’t make the connection between her and the body this morning.”
    “Why do that?” Banks asked.
    “To up the ante,” Rhyme said. “Make us sweat more. He’s let us know there’s a woman at risk. He’s valuated the victims—just like we all do—even though we claim we don’t.” Rhyme happened to glance at Sachs’s hands. He was surprised to see that, for such a beautiful woman, her fingers were a mess. Four ended in fleshy Band-Aids and several others were chewed to the quick. The cuticle of one was caked with brown blood. Henoticed too the red inflammation of the skin beneath her eyebrows, from plucking them, he assumed. And a scratch mark beside her ear. All self-destructive habits. There’re a million ways to do yourself in besides pills and Armagnac.
    Rhyme announced, “The other thing he’s telling us I already warned you about. He knows evidence. He’s saying, Don’t bother with regular forensic PE. I won’t be leaving any. That’s what he thinks of course. But we’ll find something. You bet we will.” Suddenly Rhyme frowned. “The map! We need the map. Thom!”
    The aide blurted, “What map?”
    “You know what map I mean.”
    Thom sighed. “Not a clue, Lincoln.”
    Glancing out the window and speaking half to himself, Rhyme mused, “The railroad underpass, the bootleg tunnels and access doors, the asbestos—those’re all old. He likes historical New York. I want the Randel map.”
    “Which is where?”
    “The research files for my book. Where else?”
    Thom dug through folders and pulled out a photocopy of a long, horizontal map of Manhattan. “This?”
    “That, yes!”
    It was the Randel Survey, drawn in 1811 for the commissioners of the city to plan out the grid of streets in Manhattan. The map had been printed horizontally, with Battery Park, south, to the left and Harlem, north, to the right. Laid out this way, the island resembled the body of a dog leaping, its narrow head lifted for an attack.
    “Pin it up there. Good.”
    As the aide did, Rhyme blurted, “Thom, we’re going to deputize you. Give him a shiny badge or something, Lon.”
    “Lincoln,” he muttered.
    “We need you. Come on. Haven’t you always wanted to be Sam Spade or Kojak?”
    “Only Judy Garland,” the aide replied.
    “Jessica Fletcher then! You’ll be writing the profile. Come on now, get out that Mont Blanc you’re always letting stick vainly out of your shirt pocket.”
    The young man rolled his eyes as he lifted his Parker pen and took a dusty yellow pad from a stack under one of the tables.
    “No, I’ve got a better idea,” Rhyme announced. “Put up one of those posters. Those art posters. Tape it up backwards and write on the back in marker. Write big now. So I can see it.”
    Thom selected a Monet lily pads and mounted it to the wall.
    “On the top,” the criminalist ordered, “write ‘Unsub 823.’ Then four columns. ‘Appearance. Residence. Vehicle. Other.’ Beautiful. Now, let’s start. What do we know about him?”
    Sellitto said, “Vehicle . . . He’s got a Yellow Cab.”
    “Right. And under ‘Other’ add that he knows CS—crime scene—procedures.”
    “Which,” Sellitto added, “maybe means he’s had his turn in the barrel.”
    “How’s that?” Thom asked.
    “He might have a record,” the detective explained.
    Banks said, “Should we add that he’s armed with a .32 Colt?”
    “Fuck yes,” his boss confirmed.
    Rhyme contributed, “And he knows FRs. . . .”
    “What?” Thom asked.
    “Friction ridges—fingerprints. That’s what they are, you know, ridges on our hands and feet to give us traction. And put down that he’s probably working out of a safe house. Good job, Thom. Look at him. He’s a born law enforcer.”
    Thom glowered and stepped away from the wall, brushing at his shirt, which had picked up a stringy cobweb from the wall.
    “There we go, folks,” Sellitto said. “Our first look at Mr. 823.”
    Rhyme turned to Mel Cooper. “Now, the sand. What can we tell about it?”
    Cooper lifted the goggles onto his pale forehead. He poured a sample onto a slide and slipped