The Bone Collector

instructed, “Bag it. In paper.”
    As she scooped up the grains he said, “Amelia?”
    “Yeah?”
    “He’s not there,” Rhyme said reassuringly.
    “I guess.”
    “I heard something in your voice.”
    “I’m fine,” she said shortly. “I’m smelling the air. I smell blood. Mold and mildew. And the aftershave again.”
    “The same as before?”
    “Yes.”
    “Where’s it coming from?”
    Sniffing the air, Sachs walked in a spiral, the Maypole again, until she came to another wooden post.
    “Here. It’s strongest right here.”
    “What’s ‘here,’ Amelia? You’re my legs and my eyes, remember.”
    “One of these wooden columns. Like the kind she was tied to. About fifteen feet away.”
    “So he might have rested against it. Any prints?”
    She sprayed it with ninhydrin and shone the light on it.
    “No. But the smell’s very strong.”
    “Sample a portion of the post where it’s the strongest. There’s a MotoTool in the case. Black. A portable drill. Take a sampling bit—it’s like a hollow drill bit—and mount it in the tool. There’s something called a chuck. It’s a—”
    “I own a drill press,” she said tersely.
    “Oh,” Rhyme said.
    She drilled a piece of the post out, then flicked sweat from her forehead. “Bag it in plastic?” she asked. He told her yes. She felt faint, lowered her head and caught her breath. No fucking air in here.
    “Anything else?” Rhyme asked.
    “Nothing that I can see.”
    “I’m proud of you, Amelia. Come on back and bring your treasures with you.”

SIXTEEN
    C areful,” Rhyme barked.
    “I’m an expert at this.”
    “Is it new or old?”
    “Shhh,” Thom said.
    “Oh, for Christ’s sake. The blade, is it old or new?”
    “Don’t breathe. . . . Ah, there we go. Smooth as a baby’s butt.”
    The procedure was not forensic but cosmetic.
    Thom was giving Rhyme his first shave in a week. He had also washed his hair and combed it straight back.
    A half hour before, waiting for Sachs and the evidence to arrive, Rhyme had sent Cooper out of the room while Thom slicked up a catheter with K-Y and wielded the tube. After that business had been completed Thom had looked at him and said, “You look like shit. You realize that?”
    “I don’t care. Why would I care?”
    Realizing suddenly that he did.
    “How ’bout a shave?” the young man had asked.
    “We don’t have time.”
    Rhyme’s real concern was that if Dr. Berger saw him groomed he’d be less inclined to go ahead with the suicide. A disheveled patient is a despondent patient.
    “And a wash.”
    “No.”
    “We’ve got company now, Lincoln.”
    Finally Rhyme had grumbled, “All right.”
    “And let’s lose those pajamas, what do you say?”
    “There’s nothing wrong with them.”
    But that meant all right too.
    Now, scrubbed and shaved, dressed in jeans and awhite shirt, Rhyme ignored the mirror his aide held in front of him.
    “Take that away.”
    “Remarkable improvement.”
    Lincoln Rhyme snorted derisively. “I’m going for a walk until they get back,” he announced and settled his head back into the pillow. Mel Cooper turned to him with a perplexed expression.
    “In his head,” Thom explained.
    “Your head?”
    “I imagine it,” Rhyme continued.
    “That’s quite a trick,” Cooper said.
    “I can walk through any neighborhood I want and never get mugged. Hike in the mountains and never get tired. Climb a mountain if I want. Go window-shopping on Fifth Avenue. Of course the things I see aren’t necessarily there. But so what? Neither are the stars.”
    “How’s that?” Cooper asked.
    “The starlight we see is thousands or millions of years old. By the time it gets to Earth the stars themselves’ve moved. They’re not where we see them.” Rhyme sighed as the exhaustion flooded over him. “I suppose some of them have already burned out and disappeared.” He closed his eyes.
    * * *  
    “He’s making it harder.”
    “Not necessarily,” Rhyme answered Lon Sellitto.
    Sellitto, Banks and Sachs had just returned from the stockyard scene.
    “Underwear, the moon and a plant,” cheerfully pessimistic Jerry Banks said. “That’s not exactly a road map.”
    “Dirt too,” Rhyme reminded, ever appreciative of soil.
    “Have any idea what they mean?” Sellitto asked.
    “Not yet,” Rhyme said.
    “Where’s Polling?” Sellitto muttered. “He still hasn’t answered his page.”
    “Haven’t seen him,” Rhyme said.
    A figure appeared in the