The Skin Collector

by Jeffery Deaver

  Maybe Unsub 11-5 was anticipating too.

  Terry Dobyns had also suggested that he might target the police.

  As her eyes oriented to the dimness, she examined the corridor. He couldn't go to the left - that was a dead end. To the right, a sign announced, was the tunnel that led to the doctors' office building.

  He could either escape that way ... or lie in wait for her.

  But nothing to do other than go for it.

  Knuckle time ...

  She started in that direction.

  Suddenly a figure appeared in front of her, coming down the tunnel. She paused, plastered herself against the wall, aiming her weapon high but in the general direction of the man.

  'Hey,' he called. 'I can see you there. You police?'

  A large African American dressed in a black rent-a-cop security outfit - more intimidating than an NYPD uniform - walked closer. 'I can see you! Officer.'

  She whispered harshly, 'Come here! Get under cover. We've got a perp somewhere.'

  He joined her and they both pressed against the wall.

  'Amelia.'

  'I'm Leron.' The man had quick eyes and he took in the hallway. 'I heard a ten-thirteen.'

  'Heard?'

  'Gotta scanner.'

  'Backup's on their way?'

  'Right.'

  She noted he had a Beretta Nano on his hip, a small gun, 9mm, and accurate enough under good conditions if you mastered the long trigger pull. Unusual for a hospital guard to be armed. She noted that he hadn't drawn it. No need, no target. This explained him.

  'You were in?' she asked.

  'Nineteenth.'

  One of the Upper East Side precincts.

  'Patrol. Retired, medical. Diabetes. That sucks. Keep your weight down.' He was breathing hard. 'Not that you--'

  'You came from the doctors' office building?'

  'Yep. Drew that detail today. Security in the hospital called me.' He looked behind her and snickered. 'None of the brothers I work with decided to come take a look-see. Ha.'

  'So he couldn't've gotten out that way.'

  'Nope. Not past me.' Leron scanned again, behind them, to the left, then to the right.

  So 11-5 was here somewhere near, then. But there weren't many places to hide. There were only a few doors and most of them, storage or electrical and infrastructure, were padlocked.

  Leron whispered, 'Backpack.'

  'Right.'

  'Bomb?'

  'Not his MO. Serial doer, we're thinking.'

  'Weapon?'

  'Said so but I didn't see it.'

  'If they say and don't show they usually don't have.'

  This was true.

  'But, Leron, time for you to get upstairs.' Nodding toward the stairwell. 'I'll take over.' She was supposed to keep civilians - which Leron was, even in his storm trooper uniform and with an American-made Italian gun - out of tactical situations.

  'Sorry, Detective,' the man said firmly. 'The hospital, 's my 'hood here. Nobody fucks with it. You tell me to stay put, I'll follow you anyway. An' I don't suppose you want to hear footsteps behind you in a spooky place like this.'

  Backup, she guessed, was still ten, fifteen minutes away.

  She debated. But not very long. 'Deal. Just don't fire that sissy gun of yours unless the perp's about to park one in me. Or you. And you get yourself shot, I'll be writing up reports till kingdom come. That'll piss me off.'

  'Got it.'

  'We'll go together, Leron. Now let's move.'

  CHAPTER 21

  As they eased along the wall, she asked the guard, 'Where would you hide?'

  'He can't've gone that way.' Leron nodded toward a corridor to the right. 'Dead end and no doorways to get through. Gotta be somewhere off this hallway.' He gestured forward. She took the lead and they moved about twenty feet farther down the tunnel connecting the hospital proper to the office building.

  He whispered, 'There?' The men's and women's restrooms were across from each other.

  A nod from Sachs.

  Leron continued, 'You ladies got all those stalls for cover. I'll take that one first. And--'

  'I take it and you wait here.'

  'I can back you up.'

  'No, if he sees we're both inside and he's someplace else, he'll rabbit.' She was speaking near his ear. He wore a pleasant aftershave. 'If you fire, remember the tile.'

  'Got it. Amplifies the sound. One shot, we're both deaf for five minutes. I've been there. That happens, we have to scan visually. We can't hear him coming ... That is, if I don't hit him. I am not, by any stretch, Amelia, a bad shot.'

  She liked him. 'You've done this before.'

  'Way, way too many times.'

  'Draw,' she said.

  The Nano was in his hand, dwarfed and nearly invisible in the dark flesh. He had two rings: wedding and a police academy signet. 'Gotcha covered. Go.'

  She breached the women's room.

  No drama. There were only two stalls and the doors were open.

  Then she was outside. Scanning. He nodded his all-clear.

  The one-stall men's room was even faster.

  Outside once more, Sachs gazed at the dozen storerooms opening onto the corridor. Then noted that Leron's head was cocked. He touched his ear and pointed to a doorway, about twenty feet away. He'd heard something. The door was marked with the word Specimens.

  Leron whispered, 'A scrape. In there. I'm sure.'

  'Any windows?'

  'No. We're way underground here.'

  'Locked?'

  'Yeah, but that doesn't mean anything. Anybody can get through these doors, you got a bobby pin. Women still use bobby pins?'

  'Sure, to pick locks,' she replied.

  She and Leron moved close. There was a rippled glass window in the door, and the guard ducked under to the other side as they flanked it.

  You've done this before ...

  Amelia Sachs debated.

  On the other side was most likely a perp they had to assume was armed - and at the very least in possession of deadly toxins.

  Wait for full backup from Emergency Service? With bio-chem gear?

  Debating ...

  Yes, no?

  She decided. She was going in. Every minute the unsub could fortify himself behind barricades and rig traps.

  But mostly, she was going in because she wanted to go in.

  Had to go in. Thinking: Can't explain it, Rhyme. Just the way it is.

  When you move ...

  'You back me up,' she mouthed. 'From the hall.'

  'No, I ...' But Leron fell silent, looking at her eyes. He nodded.

  She gripped the knob, which turned. Unlocked.

  Then pushing forward ... The door ploughed open, revealing nothing on the other side except blackness. Sachs jogged left and dropped into a crouch, so she wouldn't be silhouetted by the open doorway.

  Then, a huge crash from the back left corner of the room.

  Leron surged forward as Sachs gave a whisper-shout, 'No!'

  But the guard pressed through the door anyway, gallantly coming to a rescue she didn't need, a rescue that was purely a diversion.

  For what was coming next.

  'Look out!' Sachs cried. Seeing something flying out of the blackness toward Leron. It glinted in the light from the doorway as it arched overhead. She knew the bottle contained toxin, more cicutoxin or maybe that zombie fish crap.

  No known antidote ...

  'It's poison!' she called and ducked instinctively. Leron leapt to the left but stumbled and fell on his back, hard. He grunted in pain.

  But it seemed the unsub hadn't been aiming for her or the guard directly. Of course not. Their flesh wouldn't shatter the poison container; he'd tossed it high, at the ceiling.

  Leron was directly under the bottle when it hit a pipe and shattered. The poison rained down on him. He dropped his Nano and began screaming.

  By the time Sachs rolled to her feet, the unsub had pushed through a second door to the specimen room, thirty f
eet up the corridor. She heard his footfalls fading as he sprinted toward the doctors' office building.

  She turned back to Leron, who was moaning and wiping desperately at his face. 'Water, wash it off ... I can't see.'

  What the hell was it? She smelled a noxious odor, astringent.

  Acid! It looked like parts of his flesh were melting off.

  Jesus!

  Sachs debated. Go after the unsub ... or do what she could for Leron?

  Hell. She grabbed her phone and called 911 again, reporting that the perp was escaping through the connecting tunnel to the doctors' office building next to the hospital.

  She then ran to a nearby fire station and yanked the hose off the rack, turning on the stream of water and spraying Leron's face and chest, though this didn't seem to offer much relief, to judge from his screams, which were far louder than the fiercely loud rush of water.

  'Nuh, nuh, nuh ...'

  Then the heavyset man was sitting up, waving his hands fiercely. 'Enough, enough, enough!'

  He started choking and Sachs realized she was firing the water directly into his face, half drowning him. She shut off the stream.

  Leron rose to his knees, spitting.

  His eyes were red, but he seemed otherwise all right - aside from the choking.

  'How are you feeling?' she asked. 'Are you burned? Was it acid? Poison?'

  ''S okay, 's okay ... I'm all right.'

  Sachs squinted at the floor, the broken glass. She walked over to a shard that held a yellowing label.

  Oh.

  Leron nodded, squinting. 'He threw one of them samples at me, a specimen. One of the jars, right?'

  'Looks that way. Probably formaldehyde.'

  'Stings, but not bad. You washed most of it off me.'

  Sachs then scanned the floor and noted the tissue sample on the floor, near where Leron sat. She'd thought the unsub had thrown acid, which had melted off the guard's skin. In reality, the flesh was what had been in the bottle.

  Leron looked down too, prodded the lumpy tube of flesh with his foot. 'Shit. That what I think it is?'

  'I'd say so.'

  'He threw a dick and balls at me? Motherfucker. After you collar his ass, Amelia, I wanna piece of him.'

  CHAPTER 22

  In the doctors' office building, Billy Haven emerged from the connecting tunnel, where his pursuers - cop and security guard - were, he hoped, writhing in pain and clutching their inflamed eyes.

  He hadn't seen exactly how much formaldehyde spattered them - hadn't, of course, been able to watch, however appealing that sight might have been.

  Now he spotted a men's room down a deserted corridor, entered and stepped into a stall. He dug through his backpack for a change of clothing. Not many options. He slipped on worker's coveralls and replaced the stocking cap with a Mets hat. Pulled on dark-rimmed reading glasses too. Finally, he extracted a canvas gear bag, like a contractor would use, and shoved the backpack and his coat into it. He carried the bag around for this very purpose - to change his identity in case of escape.

  Thou shalt be prepared to become someone else ...

  He eased out of the restroom and made his way to the front door. He was about to step out onto the street through the double-door entry when a police car showed up, followed by two others, the tires squealing in brief skids. Officers leapt out and began speaking to every white male between fifteen and fifty near the building, asking for IDs, looking through bags.

  Hell.

  Soon other officers arrived, along with a large, blue-and-white NYPD Emergency Service truck. They formed a perimeter in the front - and presumably they were ganging at the back door and loading dock too.

  Billy turned back. He shivered in anger. The policewoman's presence, so unexpected, had ruined everything. He'd been shocked to see that it was Amelia Sachs herself, ironically looking just as steely eyed as in the photo in chapter seven of Serial Cities. Wearing pretty much the same unsexy outfit too. Oh, he wanted so badly to get her on her back and give her one of his special mods. Angel's trumpet. Brugmansia. Lethal quickly, but not so fast that Officer Sachs wouldn't die in excruciating pain.

  But before that he had to get out of here. The police, it seemed, were getting ready to search the building.

  And he knew they'd search carefully.

  The first wave of officers was moving toward the door.

  Billy casually pivoted and headed to the elevator bank, where he paused and, as nonchalantly as he could, carefully regarded the building directory as if he didn't have a care in the world - other than finding his doctor for a mole removal or colonoscopy appointment.

  He was thinking furiously. The building was ten or eleven stories tall. Did it have external fire escapes? Probably not. You didn't see those much anymore. There were probably fireproof stairwells, leading to unmarked doors opening onto alleyways. The cops would be stationed there, of course. Guns out, waiting for the perp.

  Then he noticed a sign for a doctor's office on the sixth floor.

  Billy Haven thought for a moment.

  Good, he concluded, and turned away from the directory as the first cops stepped into the lobby.

  Thou shalt always be ready to improvise ...

  CHAPTER 23

  Lon Sellitto jogged into the main hallway of Upper Manhattan Medical Center. The elevator seemed sluggish - four people waited. Impatient patients, he joked to himself - and so he descended the stairs to the basement level, where Amelia Sachs had stopped the unsub from another attack. Stopped him with seconds to spare, it seemed. If Rhyme and Pulaski hadn't figured out the target location the perp had been checking out earlier, they'd be running a homicide now, not conducting a manhunt.

  His gold shield, on a lanyard, bounced on his substantial belly. His Burberry over his arm, Sellitto was moving fast and he was out of breath.

  Fucking diets. Was there any one that worked?

  Also, gotta work out more.

  Think about it later.

  Downstairs he entered the cardiac care unit and walked a good fifty yards before he found the room he sought. Outside were two uniforms, male, one Latino, one black. In the room, he observed a white-haired man in bed, lean, with a wrinkled - and unhappy - face. Sitting in the chair beside him was a handsome woman in her early fifties, he guessed. She was in a conservative navy suit and nearly opaque stockings, a bright scarf. Her long face was hollow and her green eyes zipped around the room uneasily. Then she glanced at Sellitto in the corridor and went back to perusing the patient. Her ruddy hands were kneading a tissue to shreds. A young blond man - resembling her slightly, son probably - sat on the other side of the bed.

  Sellitto nodded to the uniforms and they stepped away from the door.

  The detective asked in a low voice, 'So. Detective Sachs?'

  'She stayed with the guard, the hospital guard, till the emergency room guys got there. Now? She's sweeping the hallway and room where the perp attacked them, her and the guard, I mean. She already ran the scene where he was going after the vic, the woman.' A nod toward the hospital room. Name badge: Juarez.

  'It was poison?'

  'Naw.'

  'Naw?' Sellitto mocked.

  The kid didn't get he was being challenged and continued, 'Naw. The perp threw this jar from a storeroom or something at her and the guard. Broke. He's the one got hit with whatever crap was inside. He'd been on the force. Retired from the Nineteenth.'

  'Detective Sachs wasn't hurt,' his partner added. Williams.

  'What kind of crap?'

  Juarez: 'They don't know. But the first report was that it coulda been acid or something like that.'

  'Fucker. Acid?'

  'Naw, it wasn't. Just preservative.'

  Sellitto asked, 'Hospital's secure?'

  'Lockdown, yeah.'

  The final word of that sentence prompted a glare at Juarez. He got it this time. 'Yessir. That's right. But they're pretty sure he's in the building next door. Detective Sachs saw him get out through the access
tunnel. Only one place to end up. There, the doctors' office building.'

  'And ESU thinks he's still there?'

  Juarez said, 'He'd have to be fast, real fast, to get out. Detective Sachs called it in right away. Had the place sealed two minutes after the attack. Possible he got out, Detective, but real unlikely.'

  'Two minutes.' Sellitto brushed at his wrinkled tie, as if that would iron the cloth flat as steel, then forgot about it. Pulling out a battered notebook, he stepped into the hospital room.

  He identified himself.

  The man in bed said, 'I'm Matthew Stanton. Don't they have security here?' His dark eyes bored into Sellitto as if the detective had held the door open for the psycho.

  Sellitto could understand but he had a job. 'We're looking into that.' Which didn't really answer the question. Then he turned to the woman. 'And you're--'

  The man said stiffly, 'My wife. Harriet. That's my son, Josh.'

  The young man rose and shook Sellitto's hand.

  'Could you tell me what happened?' the detective asked Harriet.

  Matthew rasped, 'She was just walking down the corridor, coming to visit me. And this--'

  'Sir, please. Could I hear from your wife?'

  'All right. But I'm talking to my lawyer. When we get home. I'm going to sue.'

  'Yessir.' An eyebrow raised to Harriet.

  'I'm, I'm kind of flustered,' she said.

  Sellitto didn't feel like smiling but he did anyway. 'It's fine. Take your time.'

  Harriet seemed numb as she explained that the family had come to town several days ago with their son and his cousin. It was a toss-up between the Big Apple and Disney. But New York, closing in on Christmas, had won. Yesterday, on the way to toy shop at FAO Schwarz, her husband had suffered what turned out to be a minor heart attack. She'd come to visit this morning and was here, on this floor, when she'd heard the policewoman calling out stop or something like that.

  'I didn't know anybody was there. He came up real quiet. I turned around and, goodness, there was this man. Do you think he was going to, Detective? I mean, going to attack me?'

  'We don't know, Mrs Stanton. The individual fits the description of a suspect in a prior attack--'

  'And,' the husband said, 'you didn't warn people about him?'

  'Matthew, please. You can also look at it the other way. The police saved me, you know.'

  The man fell silent but seemed even more furious. Sellitto was hoping he didn't have another coronary.