Again Banks’s eyes browsed Rhyme’s body. Maybe he’d been expecting just skin and bones. But the atrophying had stopped not long after the accident and his first physical therapists had exhausted him with exercise. Thom too, who may have been a prick at times and an old mother hen at others, was a damn good PT. He put Rhyme through passive ROM exercises every day. Taking meticulous notes on the goniometry – measurements of the range of motion that he applied to each joint in Rhyme’s body. Carefully checking the spasticity as he kept the arms and legs in a constant cycle of abduction and adduction. ROM work wasn’t a miracle but it built up some tone, cut down on debilitating contractures and kept the blood flowing. For someone whose muscular activities had been limited to his shoulders, head and left ring finger for three and a half years, Lincoln Rhyme wasn’t in such bad shape.

The young detective looked away from the complicated black ECU control sitting by Rhyme’s finger, hardwired to another controller, sprouting conduit and cables, which ran to the computer and a wall panel.

A quad’s life is wires, a therapist had told Rhyme a long time ago. The rich ones, at least. The lucky ones.

Sellitto said, “There was a murder early this morning on the West Side.”

“We’ve had reports of some homeless men and women disappearing over the past month,” Banks said. “At first we thought it might be one of them. But it wasn’t,” he added dramatically. “The vic was one of those people last night.”

Rhyme trained a blank expression on the young man with the dotted face. “Those people?”

“He doesn’t watch the news,” Thom said. “If you’re talking about the kidnapping he hasn’t heard.”

“You don’t watch the news?” Sellitto laughed. “You’re the SOB read four papers a day and recorded the local news to watch when he got home. Blaine told me you called her Katie Couric one night when you were making love.”

“I only read literature now,” Rhyme said pompously, and falsely.

Thom added, “Literature is news that stays news.”

Rhyme ignored him.

Sellitto said, “Man and woman coming back from business on the Coast. Got into a Yellow Cab at JFK. Never made it home.”

“There was a report about eleven-thirty. This cab was driving down the BQE in Queens. White male and female passenger in the back seat. Looked like they were trying to break a window out. Pounding on the glass. Nobody got tags or medallion.”

“This witness – who saw the cab. Any look at the driver?”

“No.”

“The woman passenger?”

“No sign of her.”

Eleven forty-one. Rhyme was furious with Dr. William Berger. “Nasty business,” he muttered absently.

Sellitto exhaled long and loud.

“Go on, go on,” Rhyme said.

“He was wearing her ring,” Banks said.

“Who was wearing what?”

“The vic. They found this morning. He was wearing the woman’s ring. The other passenger’s.”

“You’re sure it was hers?”

“Had her initials inside.”

“So you’ve got an unsub,” Rhyme continued, “who wants you to know he’s got the woman and she’s still alive.”

“What’s an unsub?” Thom asked.

When Rhyme ignored him Sellitto said, “Unknown subject.”

“But you know how he got it to fit?” Banks asked, a little wide-eyed for Rhyme’s taste. “Her ring?”

“I give up.”

“Cut the skin off the guy’s finger. All of it. Down to the bone.”

Rhyme gave a faint smile. “Ah, he’s a smart one, isn’t he?”

“Why’s that smart?”

“To make sure nobody came by and took the ring. It was bloody, right?”

“A mess.”

“Hard to see the ring in the first place. Then AIDS, hepatitis. Even if somebody noticed, a lot of folks’d take a pass on that trophy. What’s her name, Lon?”

The older detective nodded to his partner, who flipped open his watchbook.

“Tammie Jean Colfax. She goes by T.J. Twenty-eight. Works for Morgan Stanley.”

Rhyme observed that Banks too wore a ring. A school ring of some sort. The boy was too polished to be just a high-school and academy grad. No whiff of army about him. Wouldn’t be surprised if the jewelry bore the name Yale. A homicide detective? What was the world coming to?

The young cop cupped his coffee in hands that shook sporadically. With a minuscule gesture of his own ring finger on the Everest & Jennings ECU panel, to which his left hand was strapped, Rhyme clicked through several settings, turning the AC down. He tended not to waste controls on things like heating and air-conditioning; he reserved it for necessities like lights, the computer and his page-turning frame. But when the room got too cold his nose ran. And that’s fucking torture for a quad.

“No ransom note?” Rhyme asked.

“Nothing.”

“You’re the case officer?” Rhyme asked Sellitto.

“Under Jim Polling. Yeah. And we want you to review the CS report.”

Another laugh. “Me? I haven’t looked at a crime scene report in three years. What could I possibly tell you?”

“You could tell us tons, Linc.”

“Who’s head of IRD now?”

“Vince Peretti.”

“The congressman’s boy,” Rhyme recalled. “Have him review it.”

A moment’s hesitation. “We’d rather have you.”

“Who’s we?”

“The chief. Yours truly.”

“And how,” Rhyme asked, smiling like a schoolgirl, “does Captain Peretti feel about this vote of no confidence?”

Sellitto stood and paced through the room, glancing down at the stacks of magazines. Forensic Science Review. Harding & Boyle Scientific Equipment Company catalog. The New Scotland Yard Forensic Investigation Annual. American College of Forensic Examiners Journal. Report of the American Society of Crime Lab Directors. CRC Press Forensics. Journal of the International Institute of Forensic Science.

“Look at them,” Rhyme said. “The subscriptions lapsed ages ago. And they’re all dusty.”

“Everything in here’s fucking dusty, Linc. Why don’t you get off your lazy ass and clean this pigsty up?”

Banks looked horrified. Rhyme squelched the burst of laughter that felt alien inside him. His guard had slipped and irritation had dissolved into amusement. He momentarily regretted that he and Sellitto had drifted apart. Then he shot the feeling dead. He grumbled, “I can’t help you. Sorry.”

“We’ve got the peace conference starting on Monday. We -”

“What conference?”

“At the UN. Ambassadors, heads of state. There’ll be ten thousand dignitaries in town. You heard about that thing in London two days ago?”

“Thing?” Rhyme repeated caustically.

“Somebody tried to bomb the hotel where UNESCO was meeting. The mayor’s scared shitless somebody’s going to move on the conference here. He doesn’t want ugly Post headlines.”

“There’s also the little problem,” Rhyme said astringently, “that Miss Tammie Jean might not be enjoying her trip home either.”

“Jerry, tell him some details. Whet his appetite.”

Banks turned his attention from Rhyme’s legs to his bed, which was – Rhyme readily admitted – by far the more interesting of the two. Especially the control panel. It looked like something off the space shuttle and cost just about as much. “Ten hours after they’re snatched we find the male passenger – John Ulbrecht – shot and buried alive in the Amtrak roadbed near Thirty-seventh and Eleventh. Well, we find him dead. He’d been buried alive. Bullet was a.32.” Banks looked up and added, “The Honda Accord of slugs.”

Meaning there’d be no wily deductions about the unsub from exotic weaponry. This Banks seems smart, Rhyme thought, and all he suffers from is youth, which he might or might not outgrow. Lincoln Rhyme believed he himself had never been young.

“Rifling on the slug?” Rhyme asked.

“Six lands and grooves, left twist.”

“So he’s got himself a Colt,” Rhyme said and glanced over the crime scene diagram again.