The Bone Collector (30 page)

“I thrive on mess. That’s why I work for you.”

“What’re you, Thom? An aide or a caregiver?”

“I’m a saint.”

“Ha, fast with the comebacks. And fast with the needle too. He brought me back from the dead. Done it more than once.”

Rhyme was suddenly pierced with a fear that Sachs had seen him naked. Eyes fixed firmly on the unsub profile, he asked, “Say, do I owe you some thanks too, Sachs? Did you play Clara Barton here?” He uneasily waited for her answer, didn’t know how he could look at her again if she had.

“Nup,” Thom answered. “Saved you all by my lonesome. Didn’t want any of these sensitive souls repulsed by the sight of your baggy rear end.”

Thank you, Thom, he thought. Then barked, “Now go away. We have to talk about the case. Sachs and me.”

“You need some sleep.”

“Of course I do. But we still need to talk about the case. Good night, good night.”

After Thom left, Sachs poured some Macallan in a glass. She lowered her head and inhaled the smoky vapors.

“Who snitched?” Rhyme asked. “Pete?”

“Who?” she asked.

“Dr. Taylor, the SCI man.”

She hesitated long enough for him to know that Taylor was the one. She said finally, “He cares about you.”

“Of course he does. That’s the problem—I want him to care a little
less.
Does he know about Berger?”

“He suspects.”

Rhyme grimaced. “Look, tell him that Berger’s just an old friend. He . . . what?”

Sachs exhaled slowly, as if shooting cigarette smoke
through her pursed lips. “You not only want me to let you kill yourself you want me to lie to the one person who could talk you out of it.”

“He couldn’t talk me out of it,” Rhyme responded.

“Then why do you want me to lie?”

He laughed. “Let’s just keep Dr. Taylor in the dark for a few more days.”

“All right,” she said. “Jesus, you’re a tough person to deal with.”

He examined her closely. “Why don’t you tell me about it.”

“About what?”

“Who’s the dead? That you haven’t given up?”

“There’s plenty of them.”

“Such as?”

“Read the newspaper.”

“Come on, Sachs.”

She shook her head, stared down at her Scotch with a faint smile on her lips. “No, I don’t think so.”

He put her silence down to reluctance about having an intimate conversation with someone she’d known only for one day. Which seemed ironic, considering she sat next to a dozen catheters, a tube of K-Y jelly and a box of Depends. Still he wasn’t going to push it and said nothing more. So he was surprised when she suddenly looked up and blurted, “It’s just . . . It’s just . . . Oh,
hell.
” And as the sobbing began she lifted her hands to her face, spilling a good two inches of Scotland’s best all over the parquet.

I
can’t believe I’m telling you this.” She sat huddled in the deep chair, legs drawn up, issue shoes kicked off. The tears were gone though her face was as ruddy as her hair.

“Go on,” he encouraged.

“That guy I told you about? We were going to get an apartment together.”

“Oh, with the collie. You didn’t say it was a guy. Your boyfriend?”

The secret lover? Rhyme wondered.

“He
was
my boyfriend.”

“I was thinking maybe it was your father you’d lost.”

“Naw. Pop did pass away—three years ago. Cancer. But we knew it was coming. If that prepares you for it I guess we were prepared. But Nick . . .”

“He was killed?” Rhyme asked softly.

But she didn’t answer. “Nick Carelli. One of us. A cop. Detective, third. Worked Street Crimes.”

The name was familiar. Rhyme said nothing and let her continue.

“We lived together for a while. Talked about getting married.” She paused, seemed to be lining up her thoughts like targets at a shooting range. “He worked undercover. So we were pretty secret about our relationship. He couldn’t let word get around on the street that his gal was a cop.” She cleared her throat. “It’s hard to explain. See, we had this . . . thing between us. It was . . . it hasn’t happened for me very often. Hell, it
never
happened before Nick. We clicked in some really deep way. He knew I had to be a cop and that wasn’t a problem for him. Same with me and his working undercover. That
kind of . . . wavelength. You know, where you just completely understand someone? You ever felt what I’m talking about? With your wife?”

Rhyme smiled faintly. “I did. Yes. But not with Blaine, my wife.” And that was all he wanted to say on the subject. “How’d you meet?” he asked.

“The assignments lectures at the academy. Where somebody gets up and they tell you a little about what their division does. Nick was lecturing on undercover work. He asked me out on the spot. Our first date was at Rodman’s Neck.”

“The gun range?”

She nodded, sniffing. “Afterwards, we went to his mom’s in Brooklyn and had pasta and a bottle of Chianti. She pinched me hard and said I was too skinny to have babies. Made me eat two cannoli. We went back to my place and he stayed over that night. Quite a first date, huh? From then on we saw each other all the time. It was gonna work, Rhyme. I felt it. It was gonna work just fine.”

Rhyme said, “What happened?”

“He was . . .”

Another bolstering hit of old liquor. “He was on the take is what happened. The whole time I knew him.”

“He was?”

“Crooked. Oh, way crooked. I never had a clue. Not a single goddamn clue. He socked it away in banks around the city. He dusted close to two hundred thousand.”

Lincoln was silent a moment. “I’m sorry, Sachs. Drugs?”

“No. Merch, mostly. Appliances, TVs. ’Jackings. They called it the Brooklyn Connection. The papers did.”

Rhyme was nodding. “That’s why I remember it. There were a dozen of them in the ring, right? All cops?”

“Mostly. A few ICC people too.”

“What happened to him? Nick?”

“You know what happens when cops bust cops. They beat the crap out of him. Said he resisted but I know he didn’t. Broke three ribs, a couple fingers, smashed
his face all up. Pleaded guilty but he still got twenty to thirty.”

“For hijacking?” Rhyme was astonished.

“He worked a couple of the jobs himself. Pistol-whipped one driver, took a shot at another one. Just to scare him. I
know
it was just to scare him. But the judge threw him away.” She closed her eyes, pressed her lips together hard.

“When he got collared, Internal Affairs went after him like they were in heat. They checked pen registers. We were real careful about calling each other. He said perps sometimes tapped his line. But there were
some
calls to my place. IA came after me too. So Nick just cut me off. I mean, he
had
to. Otherwise I would’ve gone down with him. You know IA—it’s always a goddamn witch-hunt.”

“What happened?”

“To convince them that I wasn’t anything to him . . . Well, he said some things about me.” She swallowed, her eyes fixed on the floor. “At the IA inquest they wanted to know about me. Nick said, ‘Oh, P.D. Sachs? I just fucked her a few times. Turned out she was lousy. So I dumped her.’ ” She tilted her head back and mopped tears with her sleeve. “The nickname? P.D.”

“Lon told me.”

She frowned. “Did he tell you what it means?”

“The Portable’s Daughter. After your father.”

She smiled wanly. “That’s how it started. But that’s not how it ended up. At the inquest Nick said I was such a lousy fuck it really stood for ‘Pussy Diver’ ’cause I probably liked girls better. Guess how fast
that
went through the department.”

“It’s a low common denominator out there, Sachs.”

She took a deep breath. “I saw him in court toward the end of the inquest. He looked at me once and . . . I can’t even describe what was in his eyes. Just pure heartbreak. Oh, he did it to protect me. But still . . . You were right, you know. About the lonely stuff.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“No,” she said, unsmiling. “I hit you, you hit me. That was fair. And you were right. I hate being alone. I
want
to go out, I
want
to meet somebody. But after Nick I lost my taste for sex.” Sachs gave a sour laugh. “Everybody thinks looking like me’s wonderful. I could have my pick of guys, right? Bullshit. The only ones with the balls to ask me out’re the ones who want to screw all the time. So I just gave up. It’s easier by myself. I hate it, but it’s easier.”

At last Rhyme understood her reaction at seeing him for the first time. She was at ease with him because here was a man who was no threat to her. No sexual come-ons. Someone she wouldn’t have to fend off. And perhaps a certain camaraderie too—as if they were both missing the same, crucial gene.

“You know,” he joked, “you and me, we ought to get together and
not
have an affair.”

She laughed. “So tell me about your wife. How long were you married?”

“Seven years. Six before the accident, one after.”

“And she left you?”

“Nope. I left her. I didn’t want her to feel guilty about it.”

“Good of you.”

“I’d have driven her out eventually. I’m a prick. You’ve only seen my good side.” After a moment he asked, “This thing with Nick . . . it have anything to do with why you’re leaving Patrol?”

“No. Well, yes.”

“Gunshy?”

Finally she nodded. “Life on the street’s different now. That’s what did it to Nick, you know. What turned him. It’s not like it was when Pop was walking his beat. Things were better then.”

“You mean it’s not like the
stories
your dad told you.”

“Maybe,” she conceded. Sachs slumped the chair. “The arthritis? That’s true but it’s not as serious as I pretend it is.”

“I know,” Rhyme said.

“You know? How?”

“I just looked at the evidence and drew some conclusions.”

“Is that why you’ve been on my case all day? You knew I was faking?”

“I’ve been on your case,” he said, “because you’re better than you think you are.”

She gave him a screwy look.

“Ah, Sachs, you remind me of me.”

“I do?”

“Let me tell you a story. I’d been on crime scene detail maybe a year when we got a call from Homicide there was a guy found dead in an alley in Greenwich Village. All the sergeants were out and so I got elected to run the scene. I was twenty-six years old, remember. I go up there and check it out and it turns out the dead guy’s the head of the City Health and Human Services. Now, what’s he got all around him but a load of Polaroids? You should’ve seen some of those snaps—he’d been to one of those S&M clubs off Washington Street. Oh, and I forgot to mention, when they found him he was dressed in a stunning little black minidress and fishnet stockings.

“So, I secure the scene. All of a sudden a captain shows up and starts to cross the tape. I know he’s planning to have those pictures disappear on the way to the evidence room but I was so naive I didn’t care much about the pictures—I was just worried about somebody walking through the scene.”

“P is for Protect the crime scene.”

Rhyme chuckled. “So I didn’t let him in. While he was standing at the tape screaming at me a dep com tried an end run. I told him no.
He
started screaming at me. The scene stays virgin till IRD’s through with it, I told them. Guess who finally showed up?”

“The mayor?”

“Well, deputy mayor.”

“And you held ’em all off?”

“Nobody got into that scene except Latents and Photography. Of course my payback was spending six months printing floaters. But we nailed the perp with some trace and a print off one of those Polaroids—happened to be the same snap the
Post
used on page one, as a matter of fact. Just like what you did yesterday
morning, Sachs. Closing off the tracks and Eleventh Avenue.”

“I didn’t think about it,” she said. “I just did it. Why’re you looking at me that way?”

“Come on, Sachs. You
know
where you ought to be. On the street. Patrol, Major Crimes, IRD, doesn’t matter . . . But Public Affairs? You’ll rot there. It’s a good job for some people but not you. Don’t give up so fast.”

“Oh, and you’re
not
giving up? What about Berger?”

“Things’re a little different with me.”

Her glance questioned, They are? And she went prowling for a Kleenex. When she returned to the chair she asked, “You don’t carry any corpses around with you?”

“I have in my day. They’re all buried now.”

“Tell me.”

“Really, there’s nothing—”

“Not true. I can tell. Come on—I showed you mine.”

He felt an odd chill. He knew it wasn’t dysreflexia. His smile faded.

“Rhyme, go on,” she persisted. “I’d like to hear.”

“Well, there was a case a few years ago,” he said, “I made a mistake. A bad mistake.”

“Tell me.” She poured them each another finger of the Scotch.

“It was a domestic murder-suicide call. Husband and wife in a Chinatown apartment. He shot her, killed himself. I didn’t have much time for the scene; I worked it fast. And I committed a classic error—I’d made up my mind about what I was going to find before I started looking. I found some fibers that I couldn’t place but I assumed that the husband and wife’d tracked them in. I found the bullet fragments but didn’t check them against the gun we found at the scene. I noticed the blowback pattern but didn’t grid it to double-check the exact position of the gun. I did the search, signed off and went back to the office.”

“What happened?”

“The scene had been staged. It was really a burglary-murder. And the perp had never left the apartment.”

“What? He was still there?”

“After I left he crawled out from under the bed and started shooting. He killed one forensic tech and wounded an assistant ME. He got out on the street and there was a shootout with a couple of portables who’d heard the 10–13. The perp was shot up—he died later—but he killed one of the cops and wounded the other. He also shot up a family that’d just come out of a Chinese restaurant across the street. Used one of the kids as a shield.”

“Oh, my God.”

“Colin Stanton was the father’s name. He wasn’t hurt at all and he’d been an army medic—EMS said he probably could’ve saved his wife or one or both of the kids if he’d tried to stop the bleeding but he panicked and froze. He just stood there, watching them all die in front of him.”

“Jesus, Rhyme. But it wasn’t your fault. You—”

“Let me finish. That wasn’t the end of it.”

“No?”

“The husband went back home—upstate New York. Had a breakdown and went into a mental hospital for a while. He tried to kill himself. They put him under a suicide watch. First he tried to cut his wrist with a piece of paper—a magazine cover. Then he sneaked into the library and found a water glass in the librarian’s bathroom, shattered it and slashed his wrists. They stitched him up okay and kept him in the mental hospital for another year or so. Finally they released him. A month or so after he was out he tried again. Used a knife.” Rhyme added coolly, “That time it worked.”

He’d learned about Stanton’s death in an obituary faxed from the Albany County coroner to NYPD Public Affairs. Someone there had sent it to Rhyme via interoffice mail with a Post-It attached:
FYI—thought you’d be interested,
the officer had written.

“There was an IA investigation. Professional incompetence. They slapped my wrist. I think they should’ve fired me.”

She sighed and closed her eyes for a moment. “And you’re telling me you don’t feel guilty about that?”

“Not anymore.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I served my time, Sachs. I lived with those bodies for a while. But I gave ’em up. If I hadn’t, how could I have kept on working?”