“That’s how… You actually found it… Oh, the constables should be proud to have you in their ranks, Lincoln Rhyme. I thought it’d be days before you got to the house. I thought Maggie’d be stripped down by the dogs by then.”
“Why’re you doing this?” Rhyme asked.
But Taylor didn’t answer; he was examining Rhyme carefully, muttering, half to himself, “You didn’t used to be this good, you know. In the old days. You missed a lot back then, didn’t you? In the old days.”
The old days… What did he mean?
He shook his balding head, gray hair – not brown – and glanced at a copy of Rhyme’s forensic textbook. There was recognition in his eyes and slowly Rhyme began to understand.
“You read my book,” the criminalist said. “You studied it. At the library, right? The public library branch near you?”
Eight twenty-three was, after all, a reader.
So he knew Rhyme’s CS procedures. That’s why he’d swept up so carefully, why he’d worn gloves touching even surfaces most criminals wouldn’t’ve thought would retain prints, why he’d sprayed the aftershave at the scene – he’d known exactly what Sachs would be looking for.
And of course the manual wasn’t the only book he’d read.
Scenes of the Crime too. That’s what had given him the idea for the planted clues – Old New York clues. Clues that only Lincoln Rhyme would be able to figure out.
Taylor picked up the disk of spinal column he’d given to Rhyme eight months ago. He kneaded it absently between his fingers. And Rhyme saw the gift, so touching back then, for the horrific preface that it was.
His eyes were unfocused, distant. Rhyme recalled he’d seen this before – when Taylor’d examined him over the past months. He’d put it down to a doctor’s concentration but now knew it was madness. The control he’d been struggling to maintain was disappearing.
“Tell me,” Rhyme asked. “Why?”
“Why?” Taylor whispered, moving his hand along Rhyme’s leg, probing once more, knee, shin, ankle. “Because you were something remarkable, Rhyme. Unique. You were invulnerable.”
“What do you mean?”
“How can you punish a man who wants to die? If you kill him you’ve done what he wants. So I had to make you want to live.”
And the answer came to Rhyme finally.
The old days…
“It was fake, wasn’t it?” he whispered. “That obituary from the Albany coroner. You wrote it yourself.”
Colin Stanton. Dr. Taylor was Colin Stanton.
The man whose family had been butchered in front of him on the streets of Chinatown. The man who stood paralyzed in front of the bodies of his wife and two children as they bled to death, and could not make the obscene choice about which of them to save.
You missed things. In the old days.
Now, too late, the final pieces fell into place.
His watching the victims: T.J. Colfax and Monelle and Carole Ganz. He’d risked capture to stand and stare at them – just as Stanton had stood over his family, watching as they died. He wanted revenge but he was a doctor, sworn never to take a life, and so in order to kill he had to become his spiritual ancestor – the bone collector, James Schneider, a nineteenth-century madman whose family had been destroyed by the police.
“After I got out of the mental hospital I came back to Manhattan. I read the inquest report about how you missed the killer at the crime scene, how he got out of the apartment. I knew I had to kill you. But I couldn’t. I don’t know why… I kept waiting and waiting for something to happen. And then I found the book. James Schneider… He’d been through exactly what I had. He’d done it; I could too.”
I took them down to the bone.
“The obituary,” Rhyme said.
“Right. I wrote it myself on my computer. Faxed it to NYPD so they wouldn’t suspect me. Then I became someone else. Dr. Peter Taylor. I didn’t realize until later why I picked that name. Can you figure it out?” Stanton’s eyes strayed to the chart. “The answer’s there.”
Rhyme scanned the profile.
· Knows basic German
“Schneider,”Rhyme said, sighing, “It’s German for ‘tailor.’ ”
Stanton nodded. “I spent weeks at the library reading up on spinal cord trauma and then called you, claimed I’d been referred by Columbia SCI. I planned to kill you during the first appointment, cut your flesh off a strip at a time, let you bleed to death. It might’ve taken hours. Even days. But what happened?” His eyes grew wide. “I found out you wanted to kill yourself.”
He leaned close to Rhyme. “Jesus, I still remember the first time I saw you. You son of a bitch. You were dead. And I knew what I had to do – I had to make you want to live. I had to give you purpose once more.”
So it didn’t matter whom he kidnapped. Anyone would do. “You didn’t even care whether the victims lived or died.”
“Of course not. All I wanted was to force you to try to save them.”
“The knot,” Rhyme asked, noticing the loop of clothesline hanging beside the poster. “It was a surgical suture?”
He nodded.
“Of course. And the scar on your finger?”
“My finger?” He frowned. “How did you… Her neck! You printed her neck, Hanna’s. I knew that was possible. I didn’t think about it.” Angry with himself. “I broke a glass in the mental hospital library,” Stanton continued. “To cut my wrist. I squeezed it till it broke.” He madly traced the scar with his left index finger.
“The deaths,” Rhyme said evenly, “your wife and children. It was an accident. A terrible accident, horrible. But it didn’t happen on purpose. It was a mistake. I’m so sorry for you and for them.”
In a sing-songy voice, Stanton chided, “Remember what you wrote?… in the preface of your textbook?” He recited perfectly, “ ‘The criminalist knows that for every action there’s a consequence. The presence of a perpetrator alters every crime scene, however subtly. It is because of this that we can identify and locate criminals and achieve justice.’ ” Stanton grabbed Rhyme’s hair and tugged his head forward. They were inches apart. Rhyme could smell the madman’s breath, see the lenses of sweat on the gray skin. “Well, I’m the consequence of your actions.”
“What’ll you accomplish? You kill me and I’m no worse off than I would’ve been.”
“Oh, but I’m not going to kill you. Not yet.”
Stanton released Rhyme’s hair, backed away.
“You want to know what I’m going to do?” he whispered. “I’m going to kill your doctor, Berger. But not the way he’s used to killing. Oh, no sleeping pills for him, no booze. We’ll see how he likes death the old-fashioned way. Then your friend Sellitto. And Officer Sachs? Her too. She was lucky once. But I’ll get her the next time. Another burial for her. And Thom too of course. He’ll die right here in front of you. Work him down to the bone… Nice and slow.” Stanton’s breathing was fast. “Maybe we’ll take care of him today. When’s he due back?”
“I made the mistakes. It’s my-” Rhyme suddenly coughed deeply. He cleared his throat, caught his breath. “It’s my fault. Do whatever you want with me.”
“No, it’s all of you. It’s -”
“Please. You can’t -” Rhyme began to cough again. It turned into a violent racking. He managed to control it.
Stanton glanced at him.
“You can’t hurt them. I’ll do whatever-” Rhyme’s voice seized. His head flew back, his eyes bulged.