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And the prints going north are the same depth as the prints going south. So he wasn’t carrying a two-hundred-pound load one way and not the other. Was the vic barefoot?”
    Banks flipped through his notes. “Socks.”
    “Okay, then the perp was wearing the vic’s shoes for his clever little stroll to the ladder and back.”
    “If he didn’t come down the ladder how did he get to the grave?”
    “He led the man along the train tracks themselves. Probably from the north.”
    “There’re no other ladders to the roadbed for blocks in either direction.”
    “But there are tunnels running parallel to the tracks,” Rhyme continued. “They hook up with the basements of some of the old warehouses along Eleventh Avenue. A gangster during Prohibition—Owney Madden—had them dug so he could slip shipments of bootleg whisky onto New York Central trains going up to Albany and Bridgeport.”
    “But why not just bury the vic near the tunnel? Why risk being seen schlepping the guy all the way to the overpass?”
    Impatient now. “You do get what he’s telling us, don’t you?”
    Banks started to speak then shook his head.
    “He had to put the body where it’d be seen,” Rhyme said. “He needed someone to find it. That’s why he left the hand in the air. He’s waving at us. To get our attention. Sorry, you may have only one unsub but he’s plenty smart enough for two. There’s an access door to a tunnel somewhere nearby. Get down there and dust it for prints. There won’t be any. But you’ll have to do it just the same. The press, you know. When the story starts coming out . . . Well, good luck, gentlemen. Now, you’ll have to excuse me. Lon?”
    “Yes?”
    “Don’t forget about the primary crime scene. Whatever happens, you’ll have to find it. And fast.”
    “Thanks, Linc. Just read the report.”
    Rhyme said of course he would and observed that they believed the lie. Completely.

THREE
    H e had the best bedside manner Rhyme had ever encountered. And if anyone had had experience with bedside manners it was Lincoln Rhyme. He’d once calculated he’d seen seventy-eight degreed, card-carrying doctors in the past three and a half years.
    “Nice view,” Berger said, gazing out the window.
    “Isn’t it? Beautiful.”
    Though because of the height of the bed Rhyme could see nothing except a hazy sky sizzling over Central Park. That—and the birds—had been the essence of his view since he’d moved here from his last rehab hospital two and half years ago. He kept the shades drawn most of the time.
    Thom was busy rolling his boss—the maneuver helped keep his lungs clear—and then catheterizing Rhyme’s bladder, which had to be done every five or six hours. After spinal cord trauma, sphincters can be stuck open or they can be stuck closed. Rhyme was fortunate that his got jammed closed—fortunate, that is, provided someone was around to open up the uncooperative little tube with a catheter and K-Y jelly four times a day.
    Dr. Berger observed this procedure clinically and Rhyme paid no heed to the lack of privacy. One of the first things crips get over is modesty. While there’s sometimes a halfhearted effort at draping—shrouding the body when cleaning, evacuating and examining—serious crips, real crips, macho crips don’t care. At Rhyme’s first rehab center, after a patient had gone to a party or been on a date the night before, all the wardmates would wheel over to his bed to check the patient’s urine output, which was the barometer of how successful the outinghad been. One time Rhyme earned his fellow crips’ undying admiration by registering a staggering 1430 cc’s.
    He said to Berger, “Check out the ledge, doctor. I have my own guardian angels.”
    “Well. Hawks?”
    “Peregrine falcons. Usually they nest higher. I don’t know why they picked me to live with.”
    Berger glanced at the birds then turned away from the window, let the curtain fall back. The aviary didn’t interest