Some of the victims had been saved, some had not. The case had been significant for several reasons: It had brought Rhyme back from the dead – almost literally. He’d been planning to take his own life, so depressed had he been about his quadriplegia, but he’d decided to stick around for a while after the exhilaration of mentally wrestling with the brilliant killer.

The case had also brought Rhyme and Sachs together.

Rhyme now muttered, ‘And we’re not the first chapter?’

Sellitto shrugged. ‘Oh, sorry, Linc.’

‘But it’s New York.’

And it is me, Rhyme couldn’t help thinking.

‘Can I see it?’ Sachs asked. She opened the book to the chapter and began to read quickly.

‘Short,’ Rhyme observed, even more irritated. Did the Boston Strangler investigation get more pages?

‘You know,’ Sachs said, ‘I seem to remember talking to a writer a while ago. He said he was working on a book and took me out for coffee to find out some details that weren’t in the press or the official record.’ She smiled. ‘I think he said he called you too, Rhyme, and you chewed his head off and hung up on him.’

‘I don’t recall,’ he grumbled. ‘Journalism. What’s the point of it anyway?’

‘You wrote that,’ Pulaski pointed out, nodding toward a bookshelf on which sat Rhyme’s own nonfiction account of famous crime scenes in New York City.

‘It was a lark. I don’t devote my life to regurgitating lurid stories to a bloodsucking audience.’

Though perhaps he should have been more lurid, he reflected; The Scenes of the Crime had been remaindered years ago.

‘The important question is, what’s Unsub Eleven-Five’s interest in the Bone Collector case?’ He nodded at the book. ‘What’s the nature of my chapter? Does it have a theme? Does the author have an ax to grind?’

How long was it, for God’s sake? Only ten pages? Rhyme grew even more offended.

Sachs continued skimming. ‘Don’t worry. You come off well. I do too, I have to say … It’s mostly a description of the kidnapping incidents and the investigation techniques.’

She flipped more pages. ‘A lot of procedural details about the crime scene work. Some footnotes. There’s a long one about your condition.’

‘Oh, that must be some truly compelling reading.’

‘Another one about the politics of the case.’

Sachs had gotten into hot water by closing down a train line to preserve evidence – which resulted in a rift all the way up to Albany.

‘And one more footnote – about Pam’s mother,’ Sachs said.