Rhyme instructed him to do a visual then analyze it in the GC-MS – the chromatograph-spectrometer.

The technician brushed some dirt onto a slide. He gazed at it for a few minutes under the compound microscope. “This is strange, Lincoln. It’s topsoil. With an unusually high level of vegetation in it. But it’s in a curious form. Very deteriorated, very decomposed.” He looked up and Rhyme noticed the dark lines under his eyes from the eyepieces. He remembered that after hours of lab work the marks were quite pronounced and that occasionally a forensic tech would emerge from the IRD lab only to be greeted by a chorus of Rocky Raccoon.

“Burn it,” Rhyme ordered.

Cooper mounted a sample in the GC-MS unit. The machine rumbled to life and there was a hiss. “A minute or two.”

“While we’re waiting,” Rhyme said, “the bone… I keep wondering about the bone. ’Scope it, Mel.”

Cooper carefully set the bone onto the examination stage of the compound microscope. He went over it carefully. “Whoa, got something here.”

“What?”

“Very small. Transparent. Hand me the hemostat,” Cooper said to Sachs, nodding at a pair of gripper tweezers. She handed them to him and he carefully probed in the marrow of the bone. He lifted something out.

“A tiny piece of regenerated cellulose,” Cooper announced.

“Cellophane,” Rhyme said. “Tell me more.”

“Stretch and pinch marks. I’d say he didn’t leave it intentionally; there are no cut edges. It’s not inconsistent with heavy-duty cello,” Cooper said.

“ 'Not inconsistent.' ” Rhyme scowled. “I don’t like his hedges.”

“We have to hedge, Lincoln,” Cooper said cheerfully.

“ 'Associate with.' 'Suggest.' I particularly hate 'not inconsistent.' ”

“Very versatile,” Cooper said. “The boldest I’ll be is that it’s probably commercial butcher or grocery store cellophane. Not Saran Wrap. Definitely not generic-brand wrap.”

Jerry Banks walked inside from the hallway. “Bad news. The Secure-Pro company doesn’t keep any records on combinations. A machine sets them at random.”

“Ah.”

“But interesting… they said they get calls from the police all the time about their products and you’re the first one who’s ever thought of tracing a lock through the combination.”

“How ‘interesting’ can it be if it’s a dead end?” Rhyme grumbled and turned to Mel Cooper, who was shaking his head as he stared at the GC-MS computer. “What?”

“Got that soil sample result. But I’m afraid the machine might be on the fritz. The nitrogen’s off the charts. We should run it again, use more sample this time.”

Rhyme instructed him to go ahead. His eyes turned back to the bone. “Mel, how recent was the kill?”

He examined some scrapings under the electron microscope.

“Minimal bacteria clusters. Bambi here was recently deceased, looks like. Or just out of the fridge about eight hours.”

“So our perp just bought it,” Rhyme said.

“Or a month ago and froze it,” Sellitto suggested.

“No,” Cooper said. “It hasn’t been frozen. There’s no evidence of tissue damage from ice crystals. And it hasn’t been refrigerated that long. It’s not desiccated; modern refrigerators dehydrate food.”

“It’s a good lead,” Rhyme said. “Let’s get to work on it.”

“ 'Get to work'?” Sachs laughed. “Are you saying we call up all the grocery stores in the city and find out who sold veal bones yesterday?”

“No,” Rhyme countered. “In the past two days.”

“You want the Hardy Boys?”

“Let them keep doing what they’re doing. Call Emma, downtown, if she’s still working. And if she isn’t get her back to the office with the other dispatchers and put them on overtime. Get her a list of every grocery chain in town. I’ll bet our boy isn’t buying groceries for a family of four so have Emma limit the list to customers buying five items or less.”

“Warrants?” Banks asked.

“Anybody balks, we’ll get a warrant,” Sellitto said. “But let’s try without. Who knows? Some citizens might actually cooperate. I’m told it happens.”

“But how are the stores going to know who bought veal shanks?” Sachs asked. She was no longer as aloof as she had been. There was an edge in her voice. Rhyme wondered if her frustration might be a symptom of what he himself had often felt – the burdensome weight of the evidence. The essential problem for the criminalist is not that there’s too little evidence but that there’s too much.

“Checkout scanners,” Rhyme said. “They record purchases on computer. For inventory and restocking. Go ahead, Banks. I see something just crossed your mind. Speak up. I won’t send you to Siberia this time.”

“Well, only the chains have scanners, sir,” the young detective offered. “There’re hundreds of independents and butcher shops that don’t.”

“Good point. But I think he wouldn’t go to a small shop. Anonymity’s important to him. He’ll be doing his buying at big stores. Impersonal.”

Sellitto called Communications and explained to Emma what they needed.

“Let’s get a polarized shot of the cellophane,” Rhyme said to Cooper.

The technician put the minuscule fragment in a polarizing ’scope, then fitted the Polaroid camera to the eyepiece and took a shot. It was a colorful picture, a rainbow with gray streaks through it. Rhyme examined it. This pattern told them nothing by itself but it could be compared with other cello samples to see if they came from a common source.

Rhyme had a thought. “Lon, get a dozen Emergency Service officers over here. On the double.”

“Here?” Sellitto asked.

“We’re going to put an operation together.”

“You’re sure about that?” the detective asked.

“Yes! I want them now.”

“All right.” He nodded to Banks, who made the call to Haumann.

“Now, what about the other planted clue – those hairs Amelia found?”

Cooper poked through them with a probe then mounted several in the phase-contrast microscope. This instrument shot two light sources at a single subject, the second beam delayed slightly – out of phase – so the sample was both illuminated and set off by shadow.

“It’s not human,” Cooper said. “I’ll tell you that right now. And they’re guard hairs, not down.”

Hairs from the animal’s coat, he meant.

“What kind? Dog?”

“Veal calf?” Banks suggested, once again youthfully enthusiastic.

“Check the scales,” Rhyme ordered. Meaning the microscopic flakes that make up the outer sheath of a strand of hair.

Cooper typed on his computer keyboard and a few seconds later thumbnail images of scaly rods popped onto the screen. “This is thanks to you, Lincoln. Remember the database?”

At IRD Rhyme had compiled a huge collection of micrographs of different types of hair. “I do, yes, Mel. But they were in three-ring binders when I saw ’ em last. How ’d you get them on the computer?”

“ScanMaster of course. JPEG compressed.”

Jay-peg? What was that? In a few years technology had soared beyond Rhyme. Amazing…

And as Cooper examined the images, Lincoln Rhyme wondered again what he’d been wondering all day – the question that kept floating to the surface: Why the clues? The human creature is so astonishing but count on it before anything else to be just that – a creature. A laughing animal, a dangerous one, a clever one, a scared one, but always acting for a reason – a motive that will move the beast toward its desires. Scientist Lincoln Rhyme didn’t believe in chance, or randomness, or frivolity. Even psychopaths had their own logic, twisted though it may have been, and he knew there was a reason Unsub 823 spoke to them only in this cryptic way.

Cooper called, “Got it. Rodent. Probably a rat. And the hairs were shaved off.”

“That’s a hell of a clue,” Banks said. “There’re a million rats in the city. That doesn’t pin down anyplace. What’s the point of telling us that?”

Sellitto closed his eyes momentarily and muttered something under his breath. Sachs didn’t notice the look. She glanced at Rhyme curiously. He was surprised that she hadn’t figured out what the kidnapper’s message was but he said nothing. He saw no reason to share this horrifying bit of knowledge with anyone else for the time being.