The Bone Collector

Jim Polling climbed the stairs, looking disheveled and harried. Well, shuttling between press conferences, the mayor’s office and the federal building would do that to you.
    “Too bad about the trout,” Sellitto called to him. Then explained to Rhyme, “Jimmy here’s one of those real fishermen. Ties his own flies and everything. Me, I go out on a party boat with a six-pack and I’m happy.”
    “We’ll nail this fucker then worry about the fish,” Polling said, helping himself to the coffee Thom had left by the window. He looked outside and blinked in surprise to find two large birds staring at him. He turned back to Rhyme and explained that because of the kidnapping he’d had to postpone a fishing trip to Vermont. Rhyme had never fished—never had the time or inclination for any hobbies—but he found he envied Polling. The serenity of fishing appealed to him. It was a sport you could practice in solitude. Crip sports tended to be in-your-face athletics. Competitive. Proving things to the world . . . and to yourself. Wheelchair basketball, tennis, marathons. Rhyme decided if he had to have a sport it’d be fishing. Though casting a line with a single finger was probably beyond modern technology.
    Polling said, “The press is calling him a serial kidnapper.”
    If the bootie fits, Rhyme reflected.
    “And the mayor’s going nuts. Wants to call in the feds. I talked the chief into sitting tight on that one. But we can’t lose another vic.”
    “We’ll do our best,” Rhyme said caustically.
    Polling sipped the black coffee and stepped close to the bed. “You okay, Lincoln?”
    Rhyme said, “Fine.”
    Polling appraised him for a moment longer then nodded to Sellitto. “Brief me. We got another press conference in a half hour. You see the last one? Hear what that reporter asked? What did we think the vic’s family felt about her being scalded to death?”
    Banks shook his head. “Man.”
    “I nearly decked the fucker,” Polling said.
    Three and a half years ago, Rhyme recalled, during the cop-killer investigation, the captain had smashed a news crew’s videocam when the reporter wondered if Polling was being too aggressive in his investigations justbecause the suspect, Dan Shepherd, was a member of the force.
    Polling and Sellitto retired to a corner of Rhyme’s room and the detective filled him in. When the captain descended the stairs this time, Rhyme noticed, he wasn’t half as buoyant as he had been.
    “Okay,” Cooper announced. “We’ve got a hair. It was in her pocket.”
    “The whole shaft?” Rhyme asked, without much hope, and was not surprised when Cooper sighed. “Sorry. No bulb.”
    Without a bulb attached, hair isn’t individuated evidence; it’s merely class evidence. You can’t run a DNA test and link it to a specific person. Still, it has good probative value. The famous Canadian Mounties study a few years ago concluded that if a hair found at the scene matches a suspect’s hair the odds are around 4,500 to 1 that he’s the one who left it. The problem with hair, though, is that you can’t deduce much about the person it belonged to. Sex is almost impossible to determine, and race can’t be reliably established. Age can be estimated only with infant hair. Color is deceptive because of wide pigmentation variations and cosmetic dyes, and since everybody loses dozens of hairs every day you can’t even tell if the suspect is going bald.
    “Check it against the vic’s. Do a scale count and medulla pigmentation comparison,” Rhyme ordered.
    A moment later Cooper looked up from the ’scope. “It’s not hers, the Colfax woman’s.”
    “Description?” asked Rhyme.
    “Light brown. No kink so I’d say not Negroid. Pigmentation suggests it’s not Mongoloid.”
    “So Caucasian,” Rhyme said, nodding at the chart on the wall. “Confirms what the wit said. Head or body hair?”
    “There’s little diameter variation and a uniform pigment distribution. It’s head hair.”
    “Length?”
    “Three centimeters.”
    Thom asked if he should add to the profile that the kidnapper had brown hair.
    Rhyme said no. “We’ll wait for some corroboration. Just write down that we know he wears a ski mask, navy blue. Fingernail scrapings, Mel?”
    Cooper examined the trace but found nothing useful.
    “The print you found. The one on the wall. Let’s take a look at it. Could you show it to me, Amelia?”
    Sachs hesitated then carried the Polaroid over to him.
    “Your