HE CRIME SCENE WAS STAGED," Lincoln Rhyme said.

Lon Sellitto had tossed his jacket off, revealing a savagely wrinkled shirt. He now leaned back, arms crossed, against a table strewn with papers and books.

Jerry Banks was back too and his pale-blue eyes were on Rhyme's; the bed and its control panel no longer interested him.

Sellitto frowned. "But what story's the unsub tryin' to sell us?"

At crime scenes, especially homicides, perps often monkeyed with PE to lead investigators astray. Some were clever about it but most weren't. Like the husband who beat his wife to death then tried to make it look like a robbery — though he only thought to steal her jewelry, leaving his gold bracelets and diamond pinkie ring on his dresser.

"That's what's so interesting," Rhyme continued. "It's not about what happened, Lon. It's what's going to happen."

Sellitto the skeptic asked, "What makes you think so?"

"The scraps of paper. They mean three o'clock today."

"Today?"

"Look!" Nodding toward the report, an impatient jerk of his head.

"That one scrap says three p.m.," Banks pointed out. "But the other's a page number. Why do you think it means today?"

"It's not a page number." Rhyme lifted an eyebrow. They still didn't get it. "Logic! The only reason to leave clues was to tell us something. If that's the case then 823 has to be something more than just a page number because there's no clue as to what book it's from. Well, if it's not a page number what is it?"

Silence.

Exasperated, Rhyme snapped, "It's a date! Eight twenty-three. August twenty-third. Something's going to happen at three p.m. today. Now, the ball of fiber? It's asbestos."

"Asbestos?" Sellitto asked.

"In the report? The formula? It's hornblende. Silicon dioxide. That is asbestos. Why Peretti sent it to the FBI is beyond me. So. We have asbestos on a railbed where there shouldn't be any. And we've got an iron bolt with decaying oxidation on the head but none on the threads. That means it's been bolted someplace for a long time and just recently removed."

"Maybe it was overturned in the dirt," Banks offered. "When he was digging the grave?"

Rhyme said, "No. In Midtown the bedrock's close to the surface, which means so are the aquifers. All the soil from Thirty-fourth Street up to Harlem contains enough moisture to oxidize iron within a few days. It'd be completely rusted, not just the head, if it'd been buried. No, it was unbolted from someplace, carried to the scene and left there. And that sand... Come on, what's white sand doing on a train roadbed in Midtown Manhattan? The soil composition there is loam, silt, granite, hardpan and soft clay."

Banks started to speak but Rhyme cut him off abruptly. "And what were these things doing all clustered together? Oh, he's telling us something, our unsub. You bet he is. Banks, what about the access door?"

"You were right," the young man said. "They found one about a hundred feet north of the grave. Broken open from the inside. You were also right about the prints. Zip. And no tire tracks or trace evidence either."

A lock of dirty asbestos, a bolt, a torn newspaper...

"The scene?" Rhyme asked. "Intact?"

"Released."

Lincoln Rhyme, the crip with the killer lungs, exhaled a loud hiss of air, disgusted. "Who made that mistake?"

"I don't know," Sellitto said lamely. "Watch commander probably."

It was Peretti, Rhyme understood. "Then you're stuck with what you've got."

Whatever clues as to who the kidnapper was and what he had in mind were either in the report or gone forever, trampled under the feet of cops and spectators and railroad workers. Spadework — canvassing the neighborhood around the scene, interviewing witnesses, cultivating leads, traditional detective work — was done leisurely. But crime scenes themselves had to be worked "like mad lightning," Rhyme would command his officers in IRD. And he'd fired more than a few CSU techs who hadn't moved fast enough for his taste.

"Peretti ran the scene himself?" he asked.

"Peretti and a full complement."

"Full complement?" Rhyme asked wryly. "What's a full complement?"

Sellitto looked at Banks, who said, "Four techs from Photo, four from Latents. Eight searchers. ME tour doctor."

"Eight crime scene searchers?"

There's a bell curve in processing a crime scene. Two officers are considered the most efficient for a single homicide. By yourself you can miss things; three and up you tend to miss more things. Lincoln Rhyme had always searched scenes alone. He let the Latents people do the print work and Photo do the snap-shooting and videoing. But he always walked the grid by himself.

Peretti. Rhyme had hired the young man, son of a wealthy politico, six, seven years ago and he'd proved a good, by-the-book CS detective. Crime Scene is considered a plum and there's always a long waiting list to get into the unit. Rhyme took perverse pleasure in thinning the ranks of applicants by offering them a look at the family album — a collection of particularly gruesome crime-scene photos. Some officers would blanch, some would snicker. Some handed the book back, eyebrows raised, as if asking, So what? And those were the ones that Lincoln Rhyme would hire. Peretti'd been one of them.

Sellitto had asked a question. Rhyme found the detective looking at him. He repeated, "You'll work with us on this, won't you, Lincoln?"

"Work with you?" He coughed a laugh. "I can't, Lon. No. I'm just spitting out a few ideas for you. You've got it. Run with it. Thom, get me Berger." He was now regretting the decision to postpone his tête-à-tête with the death doctor. Maybe it wasn't too late. He couldn't bear the thought of waiting another day or two for his passing. And Monday... He didn't want to die on Monday. It seemed common.

"Say please."

"Thom!"

"All right," the young aide said, hands raised in surrender.

Rhyme glanced at the spot on his bedside table where the bottle, the pills and the plastic bag had sat — so very close, but like everything else in this life wholly out of Lincoln Rhyme's reach.

Sellitto made a phone call, cocked his head as the call was answered. He identified himself. The clock on the wall clicked to twelve-thirty.

"Yessir." The detective's voice sank into a respectful whisper. The mayor, Rhyme guessed. "About the kidnapping at Kennedy. I've been talking to Lincoln Rhyme... Yessir, he has some thoughts on it." The detective wandered to the window, staring blankly at the falcon and trying to explain the inexplicable to the man running the most mysterious city on earth. He hung up and turned to Rhyme.

"He and the chief both want you, Linc. They asked specifically. Wilson himself."

Rhyme laughed. "Lon, look around the room. Look at me! Does it seem like I could run a case?"

"Not a normal case, no. But this isn't a very normal one now, is it?"

"I'm sorry. I just don't have time. That doctor. The treatment. Thom, did you call him?"

"Haven't yet. Will in just a minute."

"Now! Do it now!"

Thom looked at Sellitto. Walked to the door, stepped outside. Rhyme knew he wasn't going to call. Bugger the world.

Banks touched a dot of razor scar and blurted, "Just give us some thoughts. Please. This unsub, you said he —"

Sellitto waved him silent. He kept his eyes on Rhyme.

Oh, you prick, Rhyme thought. The old silence. How we hate it and hurry to fill it. How many witnesses and suspects had caved under hot, thick silences just like this. Well, he and Sellitto had been a good team. Rhyme knew evidence and Lon Sellitto knew people.

The two musketeers. And if there was a third it was the purity of unsmiling science.

The detective's eyes dipped to the crime scene report. "Lincoln. What do you think's going to happen today at three?"

"I don't have any idea," Rhyme pronounced.

"Don'tcha?"

Cheap, Lon. I'll get you for that.

Finally, Rhyme said. "He's going to kill her — the woman in the taxi. And in some real bad way, I guarantee you. Something that'll rival getting buried alive."

"Jesus," Thom whispered from the doorway.

Why couldn't they just leave him alone? Would it do any good to tell them about the agony he felt in his neck and shoulders? Or about the phantom pain — far weaker and far eerier — roaming through his alien body? About the exhaustion he felt from the daily struggle to do, well, everything? About the most overwhelming fatigue of all — from having to rely on someone else?

Maybe he could tell them about the mosquito that'd gotten into the room last night and strafed his head for an hour; Rhyme grew dizzy with fatigue nodding it away until the insect finally landed on his ear, where Rhyme let it stab him — since that was a place he could rub against the pillow for relief from the itch.

Sellitto lifted an eyebrow.

"Today," Rhyme sighed. "One day. That's it."

"Thanks, Linc. We owe you." Sellitto pulled up a chair next to the bed. Nodded Banks to do the same, "Now. Gimme your thoughts. What's this asshole's game?"

Rhyme said, "Not so fast. I don't work alone."

"Fair enough. Who d'you want on board?"

"A tech from IRD. Whoever's the best in the lab. I want him here with the basic equipment. And we better get some tactical boys. Emergency Services. Oh, and I want some phones," Rhyme instructed, glancing at the Scotch on his dresser. He remembered the brandy Berger had in his kit. No way was he going out on cheap crap like that. His Final Exit number would be courtesy of either sixteen-year-old Lagavulin or opulent Macallan aged for decades. Or — why not? — both.

Banks pulled out his own cellular phone. "What kind of lines? Just —"

"Landlines."

"In here?"

"Of course not," Rhyme barked.

Sellitto said, "He means he wants people to make calls. From the Big Building."

"Oh."

"Call downtown," Sellitto ordered. "Have 'em give us three or four dispatchers."

"Lon," Rhyme asked, "who's doing the spadework on the death this morning?"

Banks stifled a laugh. "The Hardy Boys."

A glare from Rhyme took the smile off his face. "Detectives Bedding and Saul, sir," the boy added quickly.

But then Sellitto grinned too. "The Hardy Boys. Everybody calls 'em that. You don't know 'em, Linc. They're from the Homicide Task Force downtown."

"They look kind of alike is the thing," Banks explained. "And, well, their delivery is a little funny."

"I don't want comedians."

"No, they're good," Sellitto said. "The best canvassers we got. You know that beast 'napped that eight-year-old girl in Queens last year? Bedding and Saul did the canvass. Interviewed the entire 'hood — took twenty-two hundred statements. It was 'causa them we saved her. When we heard the vic this morning was the passenger from JFK, Chief Wilson himself put 'em on board."

"What're they doing now?"

"Witnesses mostly. Around the train tracks. And sniffing around about the driver and the cab."

Rhyme yelled to Thom in the hallway, "Did you call Berger? No, of course you didn't. The word 'insubordination' mean anything to you? At least make yourself useful. Bring that crime scene report closer and start turning the pages." He nodded toward the turning frame. "That damn thing's an Edsel."

"Aren't we in a sunny mood today?" the aide spat back.

"Hold it up higher. I'm getting glare."

He read for a minute. Then looked up.

Sellitto was on the phone but Rhyme interrupted him. "Whatever happens at three today, if we can find where he's talking about, it's going to be a crime scene. I'll need someone to work it."

"Good," Sellitto said. "I'll call Peretti. Toss him a bone. I know his nose'll be out of joint 'cause we're tiptoeing around him."

Rhyme grunted. "Did I ask for Peretti?"

"But he's the IRD golden boy," Banks said.

"I don't want him," Rhyme muttered. "There's somebody else I want."

Sellitto and Banks exchanged glances. The older detective smiled, brushing pointlessly at his wrinkled shirt. "Whoever you want, Linc, you got him. Remember, you're king for a day."

Staring at the dim eye.

T.J. Colfax, dark-haired refugee from the hills of Eastern Tennessee, NYU Business School grad, quick-as-a-whip currency trader, had just swum out of a deep dream. Her tangled hair stuck to her cheeks, sweat crawling in veins down her face and neck and chest.

She found herself looking into the black eye — a hole in a rusty pipe, about six inches across, from which a small access plate had been removed.

She sucked mildewy air through her nose — her mouth was still taped shut. Tasting plastic, the hot adhesive. Bitter.

And John? she wondered. Where was he? Refusing to think about the loud crack she'd heard last night in the basement. She'd grown up in Eastern Tennessee and knew what gunshots sounded like.

Please, she prayed for her boss. Let him be all right.

Stay calm, she raged to herself. You fucking start to cry again, you remember what happened. In the basement, after the gunshot, she'd lost it completely, breaking down, sobbing in panic, and had nearly suffocated.

Right. Calm.

Look at the black eye in the pipe. Pretend it's winking at you. The eye of your guardian angel.

T.J. sat on the floor, surrounded by a hundred pipes and ducts and snakes of conduit and wires. Hotter than her brother's diner, hotter than the back seat of Jule Whelan's Nova ten years ago. Water dripped, stalactites drooped from the ancient girders above her head. A half-dozen tiny yellow bulbs were the only illumination. Above her head — directly above — was a sign. She couldn't read it clearly, though she caught the red border. At the end of whatever the message might have been was a fat exclamation point.

She struggled once more but the cuffs held her tight, pinching against the bone. From her throat rose a desperate cry, an animal's cry. But the thick tape on her mouth and the insistent churning of machinery swallowed up the sound; no one could've heard her.

The black eye continued to stare. You'll save me, won't you? she thought.

Suddenly the silence was broken by a clanging slam, an iron bell, far away. Like a ship's door slamming shut. The noise came from the hole in the pipe. From her friendly eye.

She jerked the cuffs against the pipe and tried to stand. But she couldn't move more than a few inches.

Okay, don't panic. Just relax. You'll be all right.

It was then that she happened to see the sign above her head. In her jockeying for slack she'd straightened up slightly and moved her head to the side. This gave her an oblique view of the words.

Oh, no. Oh, Jesus in my heart...

The tears began again.

She imagined her mother, her hair pulled back from her round face, wearing her cornflower-blue housedress, whispering, "Be all raht, honey love. Doan' you worry."

But she didn't believe the words.

She believed what the sign said.

Extreme Danger! Superheated steam under High Pressure. Do not remove plate from pipe. Call Consolidated Edison for access. Extreme danger!

The black eye gaped at her, the eye that opened into the heart of the steam pipe. It stared directly at the pink flesh of her chest. From somewhere deep inside the pipe came another clink of metal on metal, workers hammering, tightening old joints.

As Tammie Jean Colfax cried and cried she heard another clink. Then a distant groan, very faint. And it seemed to her, through her tears, that the black eye finally winked.