The Bone Collector

heavy suitcase. It must have weighed fifty pounds. Just what my damn joints need. She adjusted her grip and, teeth clamped together against the pain, hurried toward the intersection.
    Sellitto, breathless, ran to the building. Banks joined them.
    “You hear?” the older detective asked. Sachs nodded.
    “This is it?” she asked.
    Sellitto nodded toward the alley. “He had to take her in this way. The lobby’s got a guard station.” They now trotted down the shadowy, cobblestoned canyon, steaming hot, smelling of piss and garbage. Battered blue Dumpsters sat nearby.
    “There,” Sellitto shouted. “Those doors.”
    The cops fanned out, running. Three of the four doors were locked tight from the inside.
    The fourth had been jimmied open and was now chained shut. The chain and lock were new.
    “This’s it!” Sellitto reached for the door, hesitated. Thinking probably about fingerprints. Then he grabbed the handle and yanked. It opened a few inches but the chain held tight. He sent three of the uniforms around to the front to get into the basement from the inside. One cop worked a cobblestone loose from the alley floor and began pounding on the door handle. A half-dozen blows, a dozen. He winced as his hand struck the door; blood gushed from a torn finger.
    A fireman ran up with a Halligan tool—a combination pickax and crowbar. He rammed the end into the chain and ripped the padlock open. Sellitto looked at Sachs expectantly. She gazed back.
    “Well, go, officer!” he barked.
    “What?”
    “Didn’t he tell you?”
    “Who?”
    “Rhyme.”
    Hell, she’d forgotten to plug in the headset. She fumbled it, finally got it plugged in. Heard: “Amelia, where—”
    “I’m here.”
    “Are you at the building?”
    “Yes.”
    “Go inside. They shut the steam off but I don’t know if it was in time. Take a medic and one ESU trooper. Go to the boiler room. You’ll probably see her rightaway, the Colfax woman. Walk to her but not directly, not in a straight line from the door to her. I don’t want you to disturb any footprints he might’ve left. Understand?”
    “Yes.” She nodded emphatically, not thinking that he couldn’t see her. Gesturing the medic and an Emergency Services trooper after her, Sachs stepped forward into the murky corridor, shadows everywhere, the groan of machinery, dripping water.
    “Amelia,” Rhyme said.
    “Yes.”
    “We were talking about ambush before. From what I know about him now I don’t think that’s the case. He’s not there, Amelia. That would be illogical. But keep your shooting hand free.”
    Illogical.
    “Okay.”
    “Now go! Fast.”

EIGHT
    A murky cavern. Hot, black, damp.
    The three of them moved quickly down the filthy hallway toward the only doorway Sachs could see. A sign said BOILER ROOM . She was behind the ESU officer, who wore full body armor and helmet. The medic was in the rear.
    Her right knuckles and shoulder throbbed from the weight of the suitcase. She shifted it to her left hand, nearly dropped it and readjusted her grip. They continued to the door.
    There, the SWAT officer pushed inside and swung his machine gun around the dimly lit room. A flashlight was attached to the barrel and it cast a line of pale light in the shreds of steam. Sachs smelled moisture, mold. And another scent, loathsome.
    Click. “Amelia?” The staticky burst of Rhyme’s voice scared the absolute hell out of her. “Where are you, Amelia?”
    With a shaking hand she turned down the volume.
    “Inside,” she gasped.
    “Is she alive?”
    Sachs rocked on her feet, staring at the sight. She squinted, not sure at first what she was seeing. Then she understood.
    “Oh, no.” Whispering. Feeling the nausea.
    The sickening boiled-meat smell wafted around her. But that wasn’t the worst of it. Neither was the sight of the woman’s skin, bright red, almost orange, peeling off in huge scales. The face completely stripped of skin. No, what brought the dread home was the angle of T.J. Colfax’s body, the impossible twisting of her limbs and torsoas she’d tried to get away from the spray of ravaging heat.
    He hoped the vic was dead. For his sake. . . .
    “Is she alive?” Rhyme repeated.
    “No,” Sachs whispered. “I don’t see how . . . No.”
    “Is the room secure?”
    Sachs glanced at the officer, who’d heard the transmission and nodded.
    “Scene secure.”
    Rhyme told her, “I want the ESU trooper out then you and the medic go check on her.”
    Sachs