The Skin Collector

  When the aide returned with the cup, he handed it off to Sachs, who thanked him. While the nerves throughout most of his body were insensate, Rhyme's gustatory cells, aka taste buds, worked just fine and he appreciated that Thom Reston made a very good cup of coffee. No capsules or pre-ground, and the word 'instant' was not in his vocabulary.

  With a wry smile the aide said to her, 'So. What do you think of Lincoln's emotional side?'

  She warmed her hands around the coffee. 'No, Thom, I think there's method to his sentiment.'

  Ah, that's my Sachs. Always thinking. This was one of the reasons he loved her. Their eyes met. Rhyme knew that his smile, minuscule though it was, probably matched hers muscle for muscle.

  Sachs continued, 'The Watchmaker was always an enigma. We didn't know much about him - he had California connections was about all. Some distant family we could never track down, no associates. This might be the chance to find people who knew and worked with him - legitimately or in his criminal projects. Right, Rhyme?'

  One hundred percent, he reflected.

  Rhyme said to Pulaski, 'And when you find out the funeral home, I want you there.'

  'Me?'

  'Your first undercover assignment.'

  'Not first,' he corrected.

  'First at a funeral.'

  'That's true. Who should I be?'

  Rhyme said the first thing that came to his mind. 'Harold Pigeon.'

  'Harry Pigeon?'

  'I was thinking of birds.' A nod toward the nest of peregrine falcons on Rhyme's window ledge, huddled down against the storm. They tended to nest lower in bad weather.

  'Harry Pigeon.' The patrolman was shaking his head. 'No way.'

  Sachs laughed. Rhyme grimaced. 'I don't care. Make up your own damn name.'

  'Stan Walesa. My mother's father.'

  'Perfect.' An impatient look at a box in the corner of the room. 'There. Get one of those.'

  'What's that?'

  Sachs explained, 'Prepaid mobiles. We keep a half dozen of them here for ops like this.'

  The young officer collected one. 'A Nokia. Hm. Flip phone. State of the art.' He said this with consummate sarcasm.

  Before he dialed, Sachs said, 'Just be sure to memorize the number first, so if somebody asks for it you don't fumble.'

  'Sure. Good.' Pulaski used the prepaid to call his personal phone and noted the number then stepped away to make the call.

  Sachs and Rhyme turned to the crime scene report on the City Hall mugging case and made some edits.

  A moment later Pulaski returned. 'The hospital said they're waiting to hear about where to send the body. The morgue director said he's expecting a call in the next few hours.'

  Rhyme looked him over. 'You up for this?'

  'I suppose. Sure.'

  'If there's a service, you'll go. If not, you'll get to the funeral home at the same time as whoever's picking up the remains. The flowers from me'll be there. Now, that'll be a conversation starter - the man Richard Logan tried to kill and who put him in jail sends flowers to his funeral.'

  'Who's Walesa supposed to be?'

  'An associate of Logan's. Exactly who, I'm not sure. I'll have to think it through. But it should be somebody inscrutable, dangerous.' He scowled. 'I wish you didn't look like an altar boy. Were you one?'

  'My brother and I both.'

  'Well, practice looking scruffy.'

  'Don't forget dangerous,' Sachs said, 'though that's going to be tougher than inscrutable.'

  Thom brought Rhyme some coffee in a straw-fitted cup. Apparently the aide had noticed him glancing at Sachs's. Rhyme thanked him with a nod.

  Old married couple ...

  Thom said, 'I feel better now, Lincoln. For a minute I really did think I was seeing a soft side. It was disorienting. But knowing that you're just setting up a sting to spy on the family of a corpse? It's restored my faith in you.'

  Rhyme grumbled, 'It's simply logical. You know, I'm really not the cold fish everyone thinks I am.'

  Though ironically Rhyme did want to send the flowers in part for a sentimental reason: to pay his respects to a worthy adversary. He suspected the Watchmaker would have done the same for him.

  Views of Death Number One and Number Two were not, of course, mutually exclusive.

  Rhyme then cocked his head.

  'What?' Sachs asked.

  'What's the temperature?'

  'Right around freezing.'

  'So there's ice on the steps outside?' Rhyme's town house sported both stairs and a disabled-accessible ramp.

  'There was in the back,' she said. 'Front too, I assume.'

  'We're about to have a visitor, I think.'

  Though the evidence was largely anecdotal, Rhyme had come to believe that, after the accident that deprived him of so many sensations, those that survived grew more discerning. Hearing in particular. He'd detected someone crunching up the front steps.

  A moment later the buzzer sounded and Thom went to answer it.

  The sound and pacing of the footsteps as the visitor entered the hallway and made for the parlor revealed who'd come a-callin'.

  'Lon.'

  Detective First-Grade Lon Sellitto turned the corner and strode through the archway, pulling off his Burberry overcoat. It was tan and vivid with the creases that characterized most of Sellitto's garb, thanks to his portly physique and careless posture. Rhyme wondered why he didn't stick with dark clothing, which wouldn't show the rumpling so much. Though once the overcoat was off and tossed over a rattan chair, Rhyme noted that the navy-blue suit displayed its own troubled texture.

  'Bad out there,' Sellitto muttered. He dusted his thinning gray-black hair, and a few dots of sleet bailed. His eyes followed them down. He'd tracked in muck and ice. 'Sorry about that.'

  Thom said not to worry and brought him a cup of coffee.

  'Bad,' the detective repeated, toasting his hands on the mug the way Sachs had. Eyes toward the window, on the other side of which, beyond the falcons, you could see sleet and mist and black branches. And little else of Central Park.

  Rhyme didn't get out much and in any event weather meant nothing to him, unless it was a factor in a crime scene.

  Or it helped his early warning system detect visitors.

  'It's pretty much finished,' Rhyme said, nodding at the City Hall mugging/murder crime scene report.

  'Yeah, yeah, that's not why I'm here.' Spoken nearly as one word.

  Rhyme's attention hovered. Sellitto was a senior officer in Major Cases and if he wasn't here to pick up the report, then maybe something else, something more interesting, was on the horizon. More propitious was that Sellitto had seen a tray of pastry, homemade by Thom, and had turned away as if the crullers were invisible. His mission here had to be urgent.

  And, therefore, engaging.

  'We got a call, a homicide down in SoHo, Linc. Earlier today. We drew straws and you got picked. Hope you're free.'

  'How can I get picked if I never drew a straw?'

  A sip of coffee. Ignoring Rhyme. 'It's a tough one.'

  'I'm listening.'

  'Woman was abducted from the basement of the store where she worked. Some boutique. Killer dragged her through an access door and into a tunnel under the building.'

  Rhyme knew that beneath SoHo was a warren of tunnels, dug years ago for transporting goods from one industrial building to another. He'd always believed it was just a matter of time before somebody used the place as a killing zone.

  'Sexual assault?'

  'No, Amelia,' Sellitto said. 'The perp's a tattoo artist, seems. And from what the respondings said a pretty fucking good one. He gave her a tat. Only he didn't use ink. He used poison.'

  Rhyme had been a forensic scientist for many years; his mind often made accurate deductions from scant preliminary details. But inferences work only when the facts presented echo those from the past. This information was unique in Rhyme's memory and didn't become a springboard for any theories whatsoever.

  'What was t
he toxin he used?'

  'They don't know. This just happened, I was saying. We're holding the scene.'

  'More, Lon. The design? That he tattooed on her?'

  'It was some words, they said.'

  The intrigue factor swelled. 'Do you know what they were?'

  'The respondings didn't say. But they told me it looked like only part of a sentence. And you can guess what that means.'

  'He's going to need more victims,' Rhyme said, glancing Sachs's way. 'So he can send the rest of his message.'

  CHAPTER 4

  Sellitto was explaining:

  'Her name was Chloe Moore, twenty-six. Part-time actress - had a few roles in commercials and some walk-ons in thrillers. Working in the boutique to pay the bills.'

  Sachs asked the standard questions: Boyfriend trouble, husband trouble, triangle troubles?

  'Naw, none of the above that we could tell. I just started uniforms canvassing around the area but the prelim from the clerks in the store and her roommate is that she hung with a good crowd. Was pretty conservative. No boyfriend presently and no bad breakups.'

  Rhyme was curious. 'Any tattoos, other than the one he killed her with?'

  'I dunno. First responders scooted as soon as the ME's team declared DCDS.'

  Deceased, declared dead at scene. The official pronouncement by the city's medical examiner that got the crime scene clock running and started all kinds of procedures. Once DCDS was called, there was no reason for anybody to remain on the scene; Rhyme insisted that responders get the hell out to avoid contamination. 'Good,' he told Sellitto. He realized he was fully in View of Death Number One mode.

  'All right, Sachs. Where are we with the city worker?' A glance at the City Hall report.

  'I'd say it's done. Still awaiting customer records about people who bought that brand of knife. But I'm betting the perp didn't use his credit card or fill out a questionnaire about customer service. Not much else to do.'

  'Agreed. Okay, Lon, we'll take it. Though I can't help but note you didn't really ask. You just drew a straw on my behalf and stomped slush in here, assuming I'd get on board.'

  'What the fuck else'd you be doing, Linc? Cross-country skiing through Central Park?'

  Rhyme liked it when people didn't shrink from his condition, when they weren't afraid to make jokes like Sellitto's. He grew furious when people treated him like a broken doll.

  There, there, poor you ...

  Sellitto said, 'I've called Crime Scene in Queens. There's an RRV en route. They'll let you take the lead, Amelia.'

  'On my way.' She pulled on a wool scarf and gloves. She picked another leather jacket from the hook, longer, mid-thigh. In all their years together Rhyme had never seen her wear a full overcoat. Leather jackets or sport, that was about it. Rarely a windbreaker, either, unless she was undercover or on a tac op.

  The wind again blasted the ancient windows, rattling the frames, and Rhyme nearly told Sachs to drive carefully - she piloted a classic rear-wheel-drive muscle car that behaved badly on ice - but telling Sachs to be cautious was like telling Rhyme to be patient; it just wasn't going to happen.

  'You want help?' Pulaski asked.

  Rhyme debated. He asked Sachs, 'You need him?'

  'Don't know. Probably not. Single victim, confined area.'

  'For the time being, rookie, you'll be our undercover mourner. Stay here. We'll think about your cover story.'

  'Sure, Lincoln.'

  'I'll call in from the scene,' Sachs said, grabbing the black canvas bag that contained the com unit she used to talk with Rhyme from the field, and hurried out the door. There was a brief howl of wind, then silence after the creak and slam.

  Rhyme noticed that Sellitto was rubbing his eyes. His face was gray and he radiated exhaustion.

  The detective saw that Rhyme was looking his way. He said, 'That fucking Met case. Not getting any sleep. Who breaks into someplace where you got a billion dollars' worth of art, pokes around and walks out empty-handed? Doesn't make sense.'

  Last week at least three very clever perps had broken into the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Fifth Avenue after hours. Video cameras were disabled and alarms suspended - no easy matter - but an exhaustive crime scene search had revealed that the perps had spent time in two areas: the antique arms hall of the museum, which was open to the public - a schoolboy's delight, filled with swords, battle-axes, armor and hundreds of other clever devices meant to excise body parts; and the museum's basement archives, storage and restoration areas. They'd left after several hours and remotely reactivated the alarms. The intrusion had been pieced together by computer analysis of the security shutdowns and physical examinations of the rooms after discovering the alarm breaches.

  It was almost as if the burglars were like many tourists who visit the museum: They'd seen enough, grown bored and headed for a nearby restaurant or bar.

  A complete inventory revealed that while some items in both areas had been moved, the intruders hadn't perped a single painting, collectible or packet of Post-it notes. Crime Scene investigators - Rhyme and Sachs hadn't worked that one - had been overwhelmed by the amount of space to search; the arms and armor displays were bad enough but the network of archives and storage rooms extended underground, far east, well past Fifth Avenue.

  The case had been demanding time-wise but Sellitto had admitted that wasn't the worst of it. 'Politics. Fucking politics.' He'd gone on to explain, 'Hizzoner thinks it looks bad his prize jewel got busted into. Which translates: My crew's working overtime and hell with everything else. We've got terror threats in the city, Linc. Code red or orange or whatever color means we're fucked. We got Tony Soprano wannabes. And what'm I doing? I'm looking through every dusty room, at every weird canvas and every naked statue in the basement. I mean, every. You wanna know my feeling about art, Linc?'

  'What, Lon?' Rhyme had asked.

  'Fuck art. That's my feeling.'

  But now the new case - the poison tat artist - had derailed the old, to the detective's apparent relief. 'You got a killer like this, the papers ain't gonna be happy we're spending our time worried about paintings of water lilies and statues of Greek gods with little dicks. You see those statues, Linc? Some of those guys ... Really, you'd think the model'd tell the sculptor to add an inch or two.'

  He sat heavily in a chair, sipped more coffee. Still no interest in the pastry.

  Rhyme then frowned. 'One thing, Lon?'

  'Yeah?'

  'When did this tattoo killing happen exactly?'

  'TOD was about an hour ago. Ninety minutes maybe.'

  Rhyme was confused. 'You couldn't get the tox screen back in that time.'

  'Naw, the ME said a couple hours.'

  'Then how'd they'd know she was poisoned?'

  'Oh, one of the medics ran a tox case a couple years ago. He said you could tell from the rictus on the face and the posture. The pain, you know. It's one hell of a way to die. We gotta get this son of a bitch, Linc.'

  CHAPTER 5

  Great. Just great.

  Standing in the basement of the SoHo boutique where Chloe Moore had been abducted, Amelia Sachs grimaced, leaning down and peering into the utility room. She was staring at the narrow tunnel that led from that room to the crime scene itself, apparently a larger tunnel, where Chloe had been killed.

  The body was just visible and brightly lit by lamps the first responders had set up.

  Palms sweating, Sachs continued to peer through the tiny shaft she'd have to crawl through.

  Just great.

  She stepped back into the cellar and inhaled two or three times, sucking moldy, fuel-oil-scented air deep into her lungs. Years ago, Lincoln Rhyme had created a database of layouts of underground areas in New York, assembled from the Department of Buildings and other city government agencies. She'd downloaded one through a secure app on her iPhone and - with dismay - reviewed the layout before her.

  Where did phobias come from? Sachs wondered. Some childhood trauma, some genetic imprinting th
at discourages us from petting poisonous snakes or cavorting on mountain ledges?

  Serpents and heights weren't her problem; claustrophobia was. If she believed in former lives, which she didn't, Sachs could imagine that she, in an earlier incarnation, had been buried alive. Or, if you followed the logic of karma, more likely she'd been a vindictive queen who'd slowly interred her rivals as they begged for mercy.

  Sachs, close to six feet tall, looked at the chart of her nemesis: the twenty-eight- or thirty-inch-diameter tunnel from the utility room to the bigger transport tunnel, the site of the killing. The narrow passage was, according to the chart, twenty-three feet long.

  It's a round coffin, she thought.

  The site of the killing was also accessible through a manhole thirty feet or so from where the body lay. That was probably his entrance to the kill site but Sachs knew she would have to wriggle through the smaller tunnel, collecting trace as she went, since that's where he'd crawled to get to the basement of the boutique - and through which he'd dragged Chloe before murdering her.

  'Sachs?' Rhyme's voice crackled through the headset. She jumped and cranked down the volume. 'Where are you? I can't see anything.' The com device Sachs wore featured not only a microphone and earpiece but also a high-def video camera. She'd just donned the unit and hadn't activated the visual yet.

  She touched a button on the surprisingly small camera - about the size of a double-A battery - and heard, 'Okay.' Then a grumbled 'It's still pretty dark.'

  'Because it is dark. I'm in a basement - and about to climb into a tunnel the size of a breadbasket.'

  'I've never actually seen a breadbasket,' he replied. 'I'm not sure they exist.' Rhyme was always in good humor when approaching a new crime scene. 'Well, let's get going. Scan around. Let's see what we've got.'

  She often wore this equipment when she searched a scene. Rhyme would offer suggestions - many fewer now than when they began working together and she was a novice. He also liked to keep an eye out for her safety, though he never admitted that. Rhyme insisted that officers search a scene solo - too much distraction otherwise. The best forensic experts bonded with the scene psychologically. They became the victim, became the perp - and accordingly located evidence they might have missed. That connection didn't happen, or it didn't happen as easily, when somebody else searched with you. But being alone was a risk. It was surprising how many times a scene turned hot: The perp returned, or remained, and attacked the officer walking the grid. It even happened that, though the perp was long gone, another, unrelated attack might occur. Sachs had once been assaulted by a homeless man, a schizophrenic who thought she'd come to steal his imaginary dog.