The Bone Collector

out the window.
    “You can’t go through here,” she told him.
    He asked her what she meant. She thought he looked woefully young to be driving such a big train.
    “It’s a crime scene. Please shut off the engine.”
    “Lady, I don’t see any crimes.”
    But Sachs wasn’t listening. She was looking up at a gap in the chain-link on the west side of the train viaduct, at the top, near Eleventh Avenue.
    That would have been one way to get the body here without being seen—parking on Eleventh and dragging the body through the narrow alley to the cliff. On Thirty-seventh, the cross street, he could be spotted from two dozen apartment windows.
    “That train, sir. Just leave it right there.”
    “I can’t leave it here.”
    “Please shut off the engine.”
    “We don’t shut off the engines of trains like this. They run all the time.”
    “And call the dispatcher. Or somebody. Have them stop the southbound trains too.”
    “We can’t do that.”
    “Now, sir. I’ve got the number of that vehicle of yours.”
    “Vehicle?”
    “I’d suggest you do it immediately,” Sachs barked.
    “What’re you going to do, lady? Gimme a ticket?”
    But Amelia Sachs was once again climbing back up the stone walls, her poor joints creaking, her lips tasting limestone dust, clay and her own sweat. She jogged to the alley she’d noticed from the roadbed and then turned around, studying Eleventh Avenue and the Javits Center across it. The hall was bustling with crowds—spectators and press. A huge banner proclaimed, Welcome UN Delegates! But earlier this morning, when the street was deserted, the perp could easily have found a parking space along here and carried the body to the tracks undetected. Sachs strode to Eleventh, surveyed the six-lane avenue, which was jammed with traffic.
    Let’s do it.
    She waded into the sea of cars and trucks and stopped the northbound lanes cold. Several drivers tried end runs and she had to issue two citations and finally drag trash cans out into the middle of the street as a barricade to make sure the good residents did their civic duty.
    Sachs had finally remembered the next of the first officer’s ADAPT rules.
    P is for Protect the crime scene.
    The sound of angry horns began to fill the hazy morning sky, soon supplemented by the drivers’ angrier shouts. A short time later she heard the sirens join the cacophony as the first of the emergency vehicles arrived.
    Forty minutes later, the scene was swarming with uniforms and investigators, dozens of them—a lot more than a hit in Hell’s Kitchen, however gruesome the cause of death, seemed to warrant. But, Sachs learned from another cop, this was a hot case, a media groper—the vic was one of two passengers who’d arrived at JFK last night, gotten into a cab and headed for the city. They’d never arrived at their homes.
    “CNN’s watching,” the uniform whispered.
    So Amelia Sachs wasn’t surprised to see blond Vince Peretti, chief of the Central Investigation and ResourceDivision, which oversaw the crime scene unit, climb over the top of the embankment and pause as he brushed dust from his thousand-dollar suit.
    She was, however, surprised to see him notice her and gesture her over, a faint smile on his clean-cut face. It occurred to her she was about to receive a nod of gratitude for her Cliffhanger routine. Saved the fingerprints on that ladder, boys. Maybe even a commendation. In the last hour of the last day of Patrol. Going out in a blaze of glory.
    He looked her up and down. “Patrolwoman, you’re no rookie, are you? I’m safe in making that assumption.”
    “I’m sorry, sir?”
    “You’re not a rookie, I assume.”
    She wasn’t, not technically, though she had only three years’ service under her belt, unlike most of the other Patrol officers her age; they had nine or ten years in. Sachs had foundered for a few years before attending the academy. “I’m not sure what you’re asking.”
    He looked exasperated and the smile vanished. “You were first officer?”
    “Yessir.”
    “Why’d you close down Eleventh Avenue? What were you thinking of?”
    She looked along the broad street, which was still blocked by her trash-can barricade. She’d gotten used to the honking but realized now it was really quite loud; the line of cars extended for miles.
    “Sir, the first officer’s job is to arrest a perp, detain any witnesses, protect—”
    “I know the ADAPT rule, officer. You closed the street to protect