E SNAGGED THEM BOTH in front of Rhyme's town-house.

Quick as the coiled snake that Jerry Banks was carrying at his side like a souvenir from Santa Fe.

Dellray and two agents stepped from an alley. He announced casually, "Got some news, honey dear. You're under arrest for the theft of evidence under custodial care of the U.S. government."

Lincoln Rhyme had been wrong. Dellray hadn't made it to the federal building after all. He'd been staking out Rhyme's digs.

Banks rolled his eyes. "Chill out, Dellray. We saved the vic."

"And a mighty good thing you did, sonny. If you hadn't we were gonna bring you up on homicide."

"But we saved 'im," Sachs said. "And you didn't."

"Thanks for that snappy recap, officer. Hold your wrists out."

"This is bullshit."

"Cuff this young lady," the Chameleon said dramatically to a burly agent beside him.

She began, "We found more clues, Agent Dellray. He's got another one. And I don't know how much time we have."

"Oh, and invite that thayre boy to ouah party too." Dellray nodded to Banks, who turned to the woman FBI agent approaching him and seemed to be thinking of decking her.

Dellray said a cheerful, "No, no, no. You don' wanna."

Banks reluctantly held out his hands.

UNSUB 823 (page 1 of 3)

Appearance: •Caucasian male, slight build

•Dark clothing

•Old gloves, reddish kidskin

•Aftershave; to cover up other scent?

Residence: •Prob. has safe house

•Located near: B'way &82nd,

•ShopRite B'way &96th,

•Anderson Foods

•Greenwich & Bank,

•ShopRite 2nd Ave., 72nd-73rd,

Vehicle: •Yellow Cab

•Recent model sedan

Other: •knows CS proc.

•possibly has record

•knows FR prints

•gun =.32 Colt

•Ties vics w/ unusual knots

•"Old" appeals to him

UNSUB 823 (page 2 of 3)

Appearance: •Ski mask? Navy blue?

•Gloves are dark

•Aftershave = Brut

Residence: •Grocery World Battery Park City

•J&G's Emporium 1709 2nd Ave.,

•Anderson Foods 34th & Lex.,

•Food Warehouse8th Ave. & 24th,

Vehicle: •Lt. gray, silver, beige

Other: •Called one vic "Hanna"

•Knows basic German

•Underground appeals to him

•Dual personalities

•Maybe priest, soc. worker, counselor

UNSUB 823 (page 3 of 3)

Appearance: •Hair color not brown

•Deep scar, index finger

•Casual clothes

Residence: •ShopRite Houston & Lafayette,

•ShopRite 6th Ave. & Houston,

•J&G's Emporium Greenwich & Franklin,

•Grocery World

•Old building, pink marble

Vehicle: •Rental car: prob. stolen

Other: •Unusual wear on shoes, reads a lot?

•Listened as he broke vic's finger

Sachs, angry, offered the agent a cold smile. "How was your trip to Morningside Heights?"

"He still killed that cabbie. Our PERT boys're crawling over that house now like beetles on dung."

"And that's all they're going to find," Sachs said. "This unsub knows crime scenes better than you and I do."

"Downtown," Dellray announced, nodding at Sachs, who winced as the cuffs ratcheted tight around her wrists.

"We can save the next one too. If you —"

"You know what you got, Officer Sachs? Take a guess. You gotchaself the right to remain silent. You got —"

"All right," the voice called from behind them. Sachs looked around and saw Jim Polling striding along the sidewalk. His slacks and dark sports shirt were rumpled. It looked as if he'd napped in them, though his bleary face suggested he hadn't slept in days. You could see a day's growth of beard and his sandy hair was an unruly mess.

Dellray blinked uneasily though it wasn't the cop he was troubled by but the tall physique of the U.S. attorney for the Southern District behind Polling. And bringing up the rear, SAC Perkins.

"Okay, Fred. Let 'em go." From the U.S. attorney.

In the modulated baritone of an FM disk jockey the Chameleon said, "She stole evidence, sir. She —"

"I just expedited some forensic analysis," Sachs said.

"Listen—" Dellray began.

"Nope," Polling said, completely in control now. No temper tantrums. "No, we're not listening." He turned to Sachs and barked, "But don't you try to be funny."

"Nosir. Sorry, sir."

The U.S. attorney said to Dellray. "Fred, you made a judgment call and it went south. Facts of life."

"It was a good lead," Dellray said.

"Well, we're changing the direction of the investigation," the U.S. attorney continued.

SAC Perkins said, "We've been conferencing with the director and with Behavioral. We've decided that Detectives Rhyme and Sellitto's positioning is the approach to pursue."

"But my snitch was clear that something was going down at the airport. That's not the sorta thing he'd be wishy about."

"It comes down to this, Fred," the U.S. attorney said bluntly. "Whatever the fucker's up to, it was Rhyme's team that saved the vics."

Dellray's lengthy fingers folded into an uncertain fist, opened again. "I appreciate that fact, sir. But —"

"Agent Dellray, this's a decision that has already been made."

The glossy black face — so energized at the federal building when he was marshaling his troops — was now somber, reserved. For the moment, the hipster was gone. "Yessir."

"This most recent hostage would've died if Detective Sachs here hadn't intervened," the U.S. attorney said.

"That'd be Officer Sachs," she corrected. "And it was mostly Lincoln Rhyme. I was his legman. So to speak."

"The case is going back to the city," the U.S. attorney announced. "The Bureau's A-T is to continue to handle terrorist-informant liaison but with reduced manpower. Anything they learn should be conveyed to Detectives Sellitto and Rhyme. Dellray, you're gonna put bodies at their disposal for any search-and-surveillance or hostage-rescue effort. Or anything else they might need. Got that?"

"Yessir."

"Good. You want to remove those handcuffs from these officers now?"

Dellray placidly unlocked the cuffs and slipped them into his pocket. He walked to a large van parked nearby. As Sachs picked up the evidence bag she saw him standing by himself at the edge of a pool of streetlight, his index finger lifted, stroking the cigarette behind his ear. She wasted a moment's sympathy on the feebie then turned and ran up the stairs, two at a time, after Jerry Banks and his rattlesnake.

"I have it figured out. Well, almost."

Sachs had just walked into Rhyme's room when he made this pronouncement. He was quite pleased with himself.

"Everything except the rattler and the glop."

She delivered the new evidence to Mel Cooper. The room had been transformed yet again and the tables were covered with new vials and beakers and pillboxes and lab equipment and boxes. It wasn't much compared to the feds' headquarters but, to Amelia Sachs, it felt oddly like home.

"Tell me," she said.

"Tomorrow's Sunday... pardon me — today's Sunday. He's going to burn down a church."

"How do you figure?"

"The date."

"On the scrap of paper? What's it mean?"

"You ever hear of the anarchists?"

"Little Russians in trench coats carrying around those bombs that look like bowling balls?" Banks said.

"From the man who reads picture books," Rhyme commented dryly. "Your Saturday-morning-cartoon roots are showing, Banks. Anarchism was an old social movement calling for the abolition of government. One anarchist, Enrico Malatesta — his shtick was 'propaganda by deed.' Translated that means murder and mayhem. One of his followers, an American named Eugene Lockworthy, lived in New York. One Sunday morning he bolted the doors of a church on the Upper East Side just after the service began and set the place on fire. Killed eighteen parishioners."

"And that happened on May 20, 1906?" Sachs asked.

"Yep."

"I'm not going to ask how you figured that out."

Rhyme shrugged. "Obvious. Our unsub likes history, right? He gave us some matches so he's telling us he's planning arson. I just thought back to the city's famous fires — the Triangle Shirtwaist, Crystal Palace, the General Slocum excursion boat... I checked the dates — May twentieth was the First Methodist Church fire."

Sachs asked, "But where? Same location as that church?"

"Doubt it," Sellitto said. "There's a commercial high-rise there now. Eight twenty-three doesn't like new places. I've got a couple men on it just in case but we're sure he's going for a church."

"And we think," Rhyme added, "that he's going to wait till a service starts."

"Why?"

"For one thing, that's what Lockworthy did," Sellitto continued. "Also, we were thinking 'bout what Terry Dobyns was telling us — upping the ante. Going for multiple vics."

"So we've got a little more time. Until the service starts."

Rhyme looked up at the ceiling. "Now, how many churches are there in Manhattan?"

"Hundreds."

"That was rhetorical, Banks. I mean — let's keep looking over the clues. He'll have to narrow it down some."

Footsteps on the stair.

It was the twins once again.

"We passed Fred Dellray outside."

"He wasn't the least bit cordial."

"Or happy."

"Whoa, look at that." Saul — Rhyme believed it was Saul; he'd forgotten who had the freckles — nodded at the snake. "I've seen more of those in one night than I ever want to again."

"Snakes?" Rhyme asked.

"We were at Metamorphosis. It's a —"

"— very spooky place. Met the owner there. Weird guy. As you may've guessed."

"Long, long beard. Wish we hadn't gone at night," Bedding continued.

"They sell taxidermied bats and insects. You wouldn't believe some of the insects —"

"Five inches long."

"— and critters like that one." Saul nodded at the snake.

"Scorpions, a lot of scorpions."

"Anyway, they had a break-in a month ago and guess what got took? A rattler's skeleton."

"Reported?" Rhyme asked.

"Yep."

"But total value of the perped merch was only a hundred bucks or so. So Larceny wasn't like all-hands-onboard, you know."

"But tell them."

Saul nodded. "The snake wasn't the only thing missing. Whoever broke in took a couple dozen bones."

"Human bones?" Rhyme asked.

"Yep. That's what the owner thought was funny. Some of those insects —"

"Forget five inches, some of 'em were eight. Easy."

"— are worth three or four hundred. But all the perp boosted was the snake and some bones."

"Any particular ones?" Rhyme asked.

"An assortment. Like your Whitman's Sampler."

"His words, not ours."

"Mostly little ones. Hand and foot. And a rib, maybe two."

"The guy wasn't sure."

"Any CS report?"

"For 'jacked bones? Noooope."

The Hardy Boys departed once more, heading downtown to the last scene to start canvassing the neighborhood.

Rhyme wondered about the snake. Was it giving them a location? Did it relate to the First Methodist fire? If rattlers had been indigenous to Manhattan, urban development had long ago played Saint Patrick and purged the island of them. Was he making a play on the word snake or rattler?

Then Rhyme suddenly believed he understood. "The snake's for us."

"Us?" Banks laughed.

"It's a slap in the face."

"Whose face?"

"Everybody who's looking for him. I think it's a practical joke."

"I wasn't laughing very hard," Sachs said.

"Your expression was pretty funny." Banks grinned.

"I think we're better than he expected and he's not happy about it. He's mad and he's taking it out on us. Thom, add that to our profile, if you would. He's mocking us."

Sellitto's phone rang. He opened it and answered. "Emma darlin'. Whatcha got?" He nodded as he jotted notes. Then looked up and announced, "Rental-car thefts. Two Avises disappeared from their location in the Bronx in the past week, one in Midtown. They're out 'cause the colors're wrong: red, green and white. No Nationals. Four Hertz were 'jacked. Three in Manhattan — one from their downtown East Side location, from Midtown and from the Upper West Side. There were two green and — this could be it — one tan. But a silver Ford got boosted from White Plains. That's my vote."

"Agree," Rhyme announced. "White Plains."

"How do you know?" Sachs asked. "Monelle said it could've been either beige or silver."

"Because our boy's in the city," Rhyme explained, "and if he's going to boost something as obvious as a car he'll do it as far away from his safe house as he can. It's a Ford, you said?"

Sellitto asked Emma the question, then looked up. "Taurus. This year's model. Dark-gray interior. Tag's irrelevant."

Rhyme nodded. "The first thing he changed, the plates. Thank her and tell her to get some sleep. But not to wander too far from the phone."

"Got something here, Lincoln," Mel Cooper called.

"What's that?"

"The glop. I'm running it through the database of brand names now." He stared at the screen. "Cross-referencing... Let's see, the most likely match is Kink-Away. It's a retail hair straightener."

"Politically incorrect but helpful. That puts us up in Harlem, wouldn't you think? Narrows down the churches considerably." Banks was looking through the religious-service directories of all three metro newspapers. "I count twenty-two."

"When's the earliest service?"

"Three have services at eight. Six at nine. One at nine-thirty. The rest at ten or eleven."

"He'll go for one of the first services. He's already giving us hours to find the place."

Sellitto said, "I've got Haumann getting the ESU boys together again."

"How 'bout Dellray?" Sachs said. She pictured the forlorn agent by himself on the street corner outside.

"What about him?" Sellitto muttered.

"Aw, let's cut him in. He wants a piece of this guy bad."

"Perkins said he was supposed to help," Banks offered.

"You really want him?" Sellitto asked, frowning.

Sachs was nodding. "Sure."

Rhyme agreed. "Okay, he can run the fed S&S teams. I want a team on each church right away. All entrances. But they should stay way back. I don't want to spook him. Maybe we can nail him in the act."

Sellitto took a phone call. He looked up, eyes closed. "Jesus."

"Oh, no," Rhyme muttered.

The detective wiped his sweating face and nodded. "Central got a 9-1-1 from the night manager at this place? The Midtown Residence Hotel? Woman and her little girl called him from La Guardia, said they were just about to get a cab. That was a while ago; they never showed up. With all the news about the 'nappings he thought he should call. Her name's Carole Ganz. From Chicago."

"Hell," Banks muttered. "A little girl, too? Oughta just pull all the cabs off the streets till we nail his butt."

Rhyme was drenched with weariness. His head raged. He remembered working a crime scene at a bomb factory. Nitroglycerin had bled out of some dynamite and seeped into an armchair Rhyme had to search for trace. Nitro gave you blinding headaches.

The screen of Cooper's computer flickered. "E-mail," he announced and called up the message. He read the fine type.

"They've polarized all the samples of cello that ESU collected. They think the scrap we found in the bone at the Pearl Street scene was from a ShopRite grocery store. It's closest to the cello they use."

"Good," Rhyme called. He nodded at the poster. "Cross off all the grocery stores but the ShopRites. What locations do we have?"

He watched Thom ink through the stores, leaving four.

B'way & 82nd

Greenwich & Bank

8th Ave. & 24th

Houston & Lafayette

"That leaves us with the Upper West Side, West Village, Chelsea and the Lower East Side."

"But he could have gone anywhere to buy them."

"Oh, sure he could've, Sachs. He could've bought them in White Plains when he was stealing the car. Or in Cleveland visiting his mother. But see, there's a point when unsubs feel comfortable in their deception and they stop bothering to cover their tracks. The stupid — or lazy — ones toss the smoking gun in the Dumpster behind their building and go on their merry way. The smarter ones drop it in a bucket of Spackle and pitch it into Hell Gate. The brilliant ones sneak into a refinery and vaporize it in a five-thousand-degree-centigrade furnace. Our unsub's smart, sure. But he's like every other perp in the history of the world. He's got limits. I'm betting he thinks we won't have the time or inclination to look for him or his safe house because we'll be concentrating on the planted clues. And of course he's dead wrong. This is exactly how we'll find him. Now, let's see if we can't get a little closer to his lair. Mel, anything in the vic's clothes from the last scene?"

But the tidal water had washed away virtually everything from William Everett's clothing.

"You say they fought, Sachs? The unsub and this Everett?"

"Wasn't much of a fight. Everett grabbed his shirt."

Rhyme clicked his tongue. "I must be getting tired. If I'd thought about it I would have had you scrape under his nails. Even if he was underwater that's one place —"

"Here you go," she said, holding up two small plastic bags.

"You scraped?"

She nodded.

"But why're there two bags?"

Holding up one bag then the other she said, "Left hand, right hand."

Mel Cooper broke into a laugh. "Even you never thought about separate bags for scraping, Lincoln. It's a great idea."

Rhyme grunted. "Differentiating the hands might have some marginal forensic value."

"Whoa," Cooper said, laughing still. "That means he thinks it's a brilliant idea and he's sorry he didn't think of it first."

The tech examined the scrapings. "Got some brick here."

"There was no brick anywhere around the drainpipe or the field," Sachs said.

"It's fragments. But there's something attached to it. I can't tell what."

Banks asked, "Could it've come from the stockyard tunnel? There was a lotta brick there, right?"

"All that came from Annie Oakley here," Rhyme said, nodding ruefully at Sachs. "No, remember, the unsub'd left before she pulled out her six-gun." Then he frowned, found himself straining forward. "Mel, I want to see that brick. In the 'scope. Is there any way?"

Cooper looked over Rhyme's computer. "I think we can rig something up." He ran a cable from the video-output port on the compound 'scope to his own computer and then dug into a large suitcase. He pulled out a long, thick gray wire. "This's a serial cable." He connected the two computers and transferred some software to Rhyme's Compaq. In five minutes, Rhyme, delighted, was seeing exactly what Cooper was looking at through the eyepiece.

The criminalist's eyes scanned the chunk of brick — hugely magnified. He laughed out loud. "He outfoxed himself. See those white blobs attached to the brick?"

"What are they?" Sellitto asked.

"Looks like glue," Cooper offered.

"Exactly. From a pet-hair roller. Perps who're real cautious use them to clean trace off themselves. But it backfired. Some bits of adhesive must've come off the roller and stuck to his clothes. So we know it's from his safe house. Held the brick in place until Everett picked it up under his fingernails."

"Does the brick tell us anything?" Sachs asked.

"It's old. And it's expensive — cheap brick was very porous because they mixed in filler. I'd guess his place is either institutional or built by someone wealthy. At least a hundred years old. Maybe older."

"Ah, here we go," Cooper said. "Another bit of glove, it looks like. If the damn things keep disintegrating we'll be down to his friction ridges before too long."

Rhyme's screen flashed and a moment later what he recognized as a tiny fleck of leather came on the screen. "Something's funny here," Cooper said.

"It's not red," Rhyme observed. "Like the other particle. This fleck's black. Run it through the microspectro-photometer."

Cooper ran the test and then tapped his computer screen. "It's leather. But the dye is different. Maybe it's stained or faded."

Rhyme was leaning forward, straining, looking closely at the fleck on the screen when he realized he was in trouble. Serious trouble.

"Hey, you okay?" It was Sachs who'd spoken.

Rhyme didn't answer. His neck and jaw began to shiver violently. A feeling like panic rose from the crest of his shattered spine and moved up into his scalp. Then, as if a thermostat had clicked on, the chills and goose bumps vanished and he began to sweat. Perspiration poured from his face and tickled frantically.

"Thom!" he whispered. "Thom, it's happening."

Then he gasped as the headache seared through his face and spread along the walls of his skull. He jammed his teeth together, swayed his head, anything to stop the unbearable agony. But nothing worked. The light in the room flickered. The pain was so bad his reaction was to flee from it, to run flat-out on legs that hadn't moved in years.

"Lincoln!" Sellitto was shouting.

"His face," Sachs gasped, "it's bright red."

And his hands were pale as ivory. All of his body below the magic latitude at C4 was turning white. Rhyme's blood, on its phony, desperate mission to get to where it thought it was needed, surged into the tiny capillaries of his brain, expanding them, threatening to burst the delicate filaments.

As the attack grew worse Rhyme was aware of Thom over him, ripping the blankets off the Clinitron. He was aware of Sachs stepping forward, her radiant blue eyes narrowed in concern. The last thing he saw before the blackness was the falcon pushing off the ledge on his huge wings, startled by the sudden flurry of activity in the room, seeking easy oblivion in the hot air over the empty streets of the city.