The Bone Collector

smelled . . . clean.”
    “So maybe a new car,” Rhyme reflected.
    Monelle dissolved into tears for a moment. Then shook her head. Sachs took her hand and, finally, she continued. “We drove for long time. Seemed like long time.”
    “You’re doing fine, honey,” Sachs said.
    Rhyme’s voice interrupted. “Tell her to strip.”
    “What?”
    “Take her clothes off.”
    “I will not.”
    “Have the medics give her a robe. We need her clothes, Amelia.”
    “But,” Sachs whispered, “she’s crying.”
    “Please,” Rhyme said urgently. “It’s important.”
    Sellitto nodded and Sachs, tight-lipped, explained to the girl about the clothes and was surprised when Monelle nodded. She was, it turned out, eager to get out of the bloody garments anyway. Giving her privacy, Sellitto walked away, to confer with Bo Haumann. Monelle put on a gown the medic offered her and one of the plain-clothes detectives covered her with his sportscoat. Sachs bagged the jeans and T-shirts.
    “Got them,” Sachs said into the radio.
    “Now she’s got to walk the scene with you,” Rhyme said.
    “What?”
    “But make sure she’s behind you. So she doesn’t contaminate any PE.”
    Sachs looked at the young woman, huddling on a gurney beside the two EMS buses.
    “She’s in no shape to do that. He cut her. All the way to the bone. So she’d bleed and the rats’d get her.”
    “Is she mobile?”
    “Probably. But you know what she’s just been through?”
    “She can give you the route they walked. She can tell you where he stood.”
    “She’s going to the ER. She lost a lot of blood.”
    A hesitation. He said pleasantly, “Just ask her.”
    But his joviality was fake and Sachs heard just impatience. She could tell that Rhyme was a man who wasn’t used to coddling people, who didn’t have to. He was someone used to having his own way.
    He persisted, “Just once around the grid.”
    You can go fuck yourself, Lincoln Rhyme.
    “It’s—”
    “Important. I know.”
    Nothing from the other end of the line.
    She was looking at Monelle. Then she heard a voice, no, her voice say to the girl, “I’m going down there to look for evidence. Will you come with me?”
    The girl’s eyes nailed Sachs deep in her heart. Tears burst. “No, no, no. I am not doing that. Bitte nicht, oh, bitte nicht  . . .”
    Sachs nodded, squeezed the woman’s arm. She began to speak into the mike, steeling herself for his reaction, but Rhyme surprised her by saying, “All right, Amelia. Let it go. Just ask her what happened when they arrived.”
    The girl explained how she’d kicked him and escaped into an adjoining tunnel.
    “I kick him again,” she said with some satisfaction. “Knock off his glove. Then he get all pissed and strangle me. He—”
    “Without the glove on?” Rhyme blurted.
    Sachs repeated the question and Monelle said, “Yes.”
    “Prints, excellent!” Rhyme shouted, his voicedistorting in the mike. “When did it happen? How long ago?”
    Monelle guessed about an hour and a half.
    “Hell,” Rhyme muttered. “Prints on skin last an hour, ninety minutes, tops. Can you print skin, Amelia?”
    “I never have before.”
    “Well, you’re about to. But fast. In the CS suitcase there’ll be a packet labeled Kromekote. Pull out a card.”
    She found a stack of glossy five-by-seven cards, similar to photographic paper.
    “Got it. Do I dust her neck?”
    “No. Press the card, glossy side down, against her skin where she thinks he touched her. Press for about three seconds.”
    Sachs did this, as Monelle stoically gazed at the sky. Then, as Rhyme instructed, she dusted the card with metallic powder, using a puffy Magna-Brush.
    “Well?” Rhyme asked eagerly.
    “It’s no good. A shape of a finger. But no visible ridges. Should I pitch it?”
    “Never throw away anything at a crime scene, Sachs,” he lectured sternly. “Bring it back. I want to see it anyway.”
    “One thing, I am thinking I forget,” said Monelle. “He touch me.”
    “You mean he molested you?” Sachs asked gently. “Rape?”
    “No, no. Not in a sex way. He touch my shoulder, face, behind my ear. Elbow. He squeezed me. I don’t know why.”
    “You hear that, Lincoln? He touched her. But it didn’t seem like he was getting off on it.”
    “Yes.”
    “ Und  . . . And one thing I am forgetting,” Monelle said. “He spoke German. Not good. Like he only study it in school. And he call me Hanna.”
    “Called her