The Skin Collector

by Jeffery Deaver

  'What was this earlier assault?' Harriet asked hesitantly. Her voice left no doubt what she was asking.

  'Not sexual assault. Homicide.'

  She was breathing rapidly now and under the heavy makeup her face seemed to grow paler. 'A, like a serial killer?' What was left of the tissue disintegrated further.

  'Again, we don't know. Could you describe him?'

  'I'll try. I only saw him for a few seconds before he pulled a mask down, grabbed me and turned me around.'

  Sellitto had been interviewing witnesses for decades and knew that even the best-intentioned remembered little or accidentally supplemented accurate observations with mistaken ones. Still, Harriet was pretty specific. She described a white man around thirty wearing a dark jacket, probably leather, gloves, a black or navy-blue wool cap, dark slacks or jeans. He was slim of build but had a round face - it struck her as Russian in appearance.

  'My husband and I went to Saint Petersburg a few years ago and we noticed that was typical of how young men look. Round heads, round faces.'

  Matthew pointed out in a sneering tone, 'Crime there too but only pickpockets. They don't sneak up on you in hospitals.'

  'Higher standards, yeah,' Sellitto replied. Then: 'Or the guy's appearance: maybe Slavic in general? Eastern European?'

  'I don't know. I suppose so. We've only been to Russia. Oh, and his eyes were light blue. Very light.'

  'Scars?'

  'I didn't see any. I think he had a tattoo. One of his arms. Red. But I couldn't see much of it. He had the coat on.'

  'Hair?'

  Harriet's eyes scanned the floor. 'He pulled that hat down pretty quick. I just couldn't tell you for sure.'

  'Did he say anything to you?'

  'Just whispered to stop struggling or he'd hurt me. I didn't hear an accent.'

  And that was it.

  Age, build, eye color and a round head. Russian or Slavic. Clothing.

  Sellitto radioed to Bo Haumann, the head of NYPD Emergency Service, and the officer in charge of the manhunt. He gave the description and the latest information.

  'Roger that, Lon. We've sealed the office building. Don't think he got out but I've got some teams canvassing the streets nearby. K.'

  'I'll get back to you, Bo.' Sellitto didn't bother with radio code propriety. Never did. It wasn't that rank had privilege; tenure did.

  He turned back to Harriet Stanton and her husband, who was still glowering. Heart attack? He looked pretty spare. And had an outdoor-weathered face, so he probably got a fair amount of exercise. Maybe being in a bad mood was a risk factor for coronaries. Sellitto felt bad for Harriet, who seemed like a nice enough lady.

  Since there didn't seem to be any connection between the unsub and the first victim, the same was probably true now; he was hunting randomly. Still, Sellitto asked if she'd ever seen him before, or had any awareness of being followed prior to her visit to the hospital. Or if she and her husband were wealthy or involved in anything that might make them a target of criminals.

  The last query seemed to amuse Harriet. No, she explained, they were just working-class tourists - whose vacation to New York had been ruined.

  Sellitto took her number and the name of the hotel where they were staying and wished her husband a fast recovery.

  Harriet thanked him. Matthew nodded gruffly, grabbed the TV's remote control and upped the volume on the History Channel.

  Then the would-be victim vanished from Sellitto's thoughts as his radio crackled to life.

  'All units, report of assault on sixth floor of physicians' office building, where search operation for unsub is under way. Next to Upper Manhattan Medical Center. There's been chemical weapon release, substance unknown. Only personnel with bio-chem masks are to remain in the building.'

  Sellitto's thoughts tumbled. 'Son of a bitch.'

  Gasping, he ran up the hallway and out of the hospital, into the circular drive. He looked up at the office building, which was to his left. He began jogging toward it, pulling his radio from his belt. He made a call.

  'Bo?' He was breathless. 'Bo?' he tried again.

  'That you, Lon? Over.'

  'Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just heard. The assault. What happened?'

  The former drill sergeant said crisply, 'I'm getting secondhand reports. Looks like the perp tried to steal some scrubs in a doctor's office on the sixth floor. An orderly spotted him and he ran. But not before he opened a bottle and spilled something on the floor.'

  'Maybe formaldehyde, like with Amelia.'

  'No, he said it was bad. People puking, passing out. Fumes everywhere. Definitely toxic.'

  Sellitto considered this. Finally he asked, 'Do you know what office? That he dumped the poison in?'

  'I can find out. I'm on the first floor, near the directory. I'll see.' A moment later he came back on. 'There's only one doctor on six. He has the whole floor.'

  Sellitto asked, 'Is he a plastic surgeon?'

  'Wait. You're right. How'd you know?'

  'Because our boy wrapped his face in bandages and is strolling down the fire stairs right now with all the other patients you're evacuating.'

  A pause. Haumann said, 'Hell. Okay, we'll marshal 'em in the lobby, get IDs. Nobody with a Band-Aid on is getting out the front door. Good call, Lon. We're lucky, we'll have him in ten minutes.'

  CHAPTER 24

  Rhyme was wheeling back and forth, back and forth, in front of the high-definition monitor. It was around forty minutes after the report had come in about the perp releasing the poison gas in the sixth-floor suite in the doctors' office building.

  On the screen was an image of the front of the building and, beyond that, the hospital itself.

  Courtesy of an Emergency Service Unit video cam.

  The buzzer sounded and Thom went to answer. The door clicked, the wind howled.

  Then a familiar clomp of footsteps, which told Rhyme that Lon Sellitto had arrived.

  Ah ...

  The detective turned the corner. Stopped. His face was a grimace.

  'Now,' Rhyme said, his voice infused with sharp humor. 'I'm just curious--'

  'All right, Linc,' Sellitto said, stripping off the wet Burberry. 'It was--'

  'Curious, I was saying. Did it occur to anyone? Any single one? Did it occur to any person on the face of the earth that it wasn't an orderly reporting the poison gas? That it was the unsub himself who called in a fake report? So that everyone would start checking out patients with bandages on their faces?'

  'Linc--'

  'And no one would start checking out anyone in a dental face guard, like tattoo artists would wear, and coveralls, strolling casually out the front door like an emergency worker.'

  'I know that now, Linc.'

  'So I guess it didn't occur to anyone at the time. It's only--'

  'You made your fucking point.'

  '--now that we can figure out--'

  'You can be a real prick sometimes, Linc. You know that.'

  Rhyme did know that and he didn't care. 'And the manhunt around Marble Hill?'

  'Checkpoints at main streets, officers at every bus stop and subway station in the area.'

  'Looking for ...?' Rhyme asked.

  'Any white male around thirty with a pulse.'

  Rhyme's computer dinged, and he called up the email. It was Jean Eagleston again, the Crime Scene officer. She was the one who'd done an Identi-Kit composite rendering of the man, based on Harriet Stanton's observation. It depicted an unsmiling young man with Slavic features, a prominent forehead and brows close together. The unsub's pale eyes gave him a startling, eerie visage.

  Rhyme didn't believe that good or evil could be objectively reflected in appearance. But his gut told him this was the face of a truly dangerous person.

  A second high-def monitor nearby fluttered to life and there was Amelia Sachs, peering his way.

  'You there, Rhyme?'

  'Yes, yes, Sachs. Go ahead.' This was the computer they used for face-to-face videoconferencing with la
w enforcers in other cities, for occasional interrogation of suspects and for Skyping with the children of Rhyme's closest relative - his cousin who lived in New Jersey - well, Sachs primarily, who read them stories and told jokes. Sachs and Pam would also Skype, sometimes spending hours, chatting away.

  He wondered if now, after their fight, that wouldn't be happening anymore.

  She asked, 'What's the story? Is it true, the getaway?'

  Rhyme grimaced and glanced at Sellitto, who rolled his eyes and said, 'He's gone, yeah. But we got a good description from the hostage.'

  'What's the prognosis, Sachs? The guard?'

  'Eyes're going to need some treatment is all. He got hit by formaldehyde and severed male genitals. That's what was in the jar. Which he's not happy about.' She gave a faint laugh. 'It was dark, I saw some flesh on the ground. I thought the unsub had used acid and it was melting the guard's flesh off. But he'll be okay. Now, Lon, how's the manhunt going?'

  The detective explained to her, 'We've got undercover at all the bus and subway stations in Marble Hill and north and south - the Number One train. He could get a cab but I'm thinking he won't want to be seen one on one - by the driver. According to our tat expert, he's not from around here so he probably doesn't know about gypsy cabs. We're betting he'll stick to public transportation.'

  Rhyme could see Sachs nodding, then the image was breaking up, freezing. The unreliable Internet.

  The picture came in clear again.

  She said, 'He might try for a train farther east.'

  'Yeah, I suppose he could.'

  Rhyme said, 'Good point.' He told Sellitto, 'Get some of your people to the Number Four train and the D and B lines. That's central Bronx. He's not going to get farther east than that.'

  'Hm. I'll do it.' The detective stepped away to make the call.

  Sachs said, 'One thing occurred to me, Rhyme?'

  'And?'

  'There were dozens of storerooms he could've hidden in. Why did he pick that one?'

  'Your thought?'

  'He'd spent time there before. I think that's where he was going to take Harriet Stanton to tattoo her.'

  'Why?'

  'It was like a skin museum.' She described the preserved tissue samples in jars.

  'Skin. Sure. His obsession.'

  'Exactly. Internal organs, brains. But easily half the jars contained external flesh.'

  'You working up some kind of dark psychology here, Sachs? I'm not sure that's helpful. We know he's interested in skin.'

  'I'm just figuring he'd spent more time there than just checking it out as a possible murder site. Like a tourist at MoMA, you know. It drew him. So I walked the grid three times there.'

  'Now, that's a valid use for psychobabble,' Rhyme said.

  CHAPTER 25

  Head down, Billy strode quickly toward the subway in the Bronx that would take him south to Manhattan, to his workshop, to his terrariums, to safety and comfort.

  He reflected back to the hospital corridor, picturing Amelia Sachs ... He couldn't help but think of her with some familiarity, having learned everything he could about the woman - and Lincoln Rhyme.

  How had she found him? Well, that wasn't quite the question. How had Rhyme found him? She was good, sure. But Rhyme was better.

  Okay, how? How exactly?

  Well, he'd been to the hospital earlier. Maybe he'd picked up some trace there and, despite his diligence, had unwittingly deposited a bit near Chloe Moore's body.

  Were the police thinking they'd avert another attack by sending Amelia Sachs to stop him?

  But, no, Billy decided, they couldn't predict that he'd return when he had. The policewoman had come to the hospital just to ask if any staffers had seen a man fitting his description.

  His thoughts strayed to Amelia Sachs ... She reminded him in some ways of Lovely Girl, her beautiful face, her hair, her keen and determined eyes. Some women, he knew, you had to control by reasoning with them, some by dominating. Others you couldn't control, and that was a problem.

  Picturing her pale skin.

  The Oleander Room ...

  He imagined Amelia there, lying on the couch, the settee, the love seat, the lounger.

  Breath growing faster, he pictured blood on her skin, he tasted blood on her skin. He smelled blood.

  But forget that now.

  Another word came to mind: anticipate.

  If Rhyme had figured out about the hospital, he might have figured out Billy would come this way to escape. So he picked up his pace. It was a busy street. Discount shops, diners, and mobile phone and calling card stores. The clientele, working class. Payroll Advances. Best Rates in Town.

  And people everywhere: parents with little kids, bundled up like sock puppets against the cutting chill and endless sleet. Teenagers ignoring the cold or genuinely not feeling it. Thin jackets, jeans, short skirts and fake fur collars on loud jackets. High heels, no stockings. Constant motion. Billy dodged a skateboarder a moment before collision.

  He wanted to grab the kid, fling him off the board. But he was past in a flash. Besides, Billy wouldn't have made a scene. Bad idea, under the circumstances.

  Back to his eastward escape. He noted here too a lot of skin art - Billy's preferred term for tats. Here, lower class, mixed race, he noticed a lot of writing on skin. In script primarily. Bible passages maybe or poems or manifestos. Martin Luther King, Jr., was represented, Billy speculated. But the lines might have been from Shaq or the Koran. Some writings were prominent - seventy-two-point type. Most, though, were so tiny you needed a magnifier to read them.

  Crosses in all designs - inked on men who looked like gangbangers and drug dealers and on girls who looked like whores.

  A young man, around twenty, approached from the opposite direction, very dark-skinned, broad, a bit shorter than Billy, who stared at the keloids on his cheeks and temples - an intricate pattern of crosshatched lines.

  He noticed Billy's attention and slowed, then stopped, nodded. 'Hey.' Just stood there, smiling. Maybe he sensed that Billy was appreciating the scarification. Which he was.

  Billy stopped too. 'You've got some righteous marking.'

  'Yo. Thanks.'

  In sub-Saharan African tradition this form of modification was done by cutting flaps in the skin and packing in irritating plant juices to raise welts, which hardened into permanent designs. Keloids serve several purposes: They identify the bearers as members of a particular family or tribe, they indicate fixed social or political positions, they mark milestones in life's transit, like puberty and readiness for marriage. In some African cultures, scarification indicates sexual prowess and appetite - and the scars themselves can become erogenous zones. The more extensive a woman's scarring, the more appealing she is as a partner because it implies she's better able to withstand the pain of childbirth and produce many offspring.

  Billy had always appreciated keloids; he'd never done any. The ones on the young man's face were impressive, linked chains and vines. African skin art is largely geometric; rarely are animals, plants or people depicted. Never words. Billy was nearly overcome by an urge to touch the pattern. With effort, he resisted.

  The local, in turn, regarded Billy with an odd gaze that embraced both curiosity and camaraderie. Finally he looked around and seemed to come to a decision. A whisper: 'Yo, you want brown? Moonrock? Sugar? Whatchu want?'

  'I ...'

  'How much you got to spend? I hook you up.'

  Drugs.

  Disgusting.

  In an instant the admiration of the scarification turned to hatred. It felt like the young man had betrayed him. The skin art was ruined. Billy wanted to stick his neck with a needle, get him into an alley and ink a message on his gut with snakeroot or hemlock.

  But then Billy realized this was just another incident that proved the Rule of Skin true. No surprise here. He could be no more upset at this than a law of physics.

  He gave a disappointed smile, walked around the man and kept moving.

 
; 'Yo, I hook you up!'

  A block east, Billy glanced behind him - he saw no one that was a threat - and stepped into a clothing store. He paid cash for a Yankees baseball cap and a pair of cheap sneakers. He tugged the hat on and swapped shoes. His old ones he didn't throw out - concerned that the police might search the trash cans and find a pair of Bass with his prints on them - but when the clerk wasn't looking he left one in a bin of discount shoes and the other on a rack, behind a row of similar footwear. He then stepped outside, striding fast toward his goal: the subway that would take him back to Canal Street, back to safety. Head down, once more, examining the congested sidewalks, filthy, marred with ovals of dog pee and dark dots of chewing gum, bordered with tired slush.

  Yet no one looked at the coveralls, at the gear bag, no one glanced his way as if wondering: Is he the man who killed that girl in SoHo? The man who was nearly cornered and gunned down at the hospital in Marble Hill?

  Walking fast once more, inhaling cold air rich with noxious exhaust. Of course he wouldn't take the Number One train, which had a Marble Hill stop, because it was so close to the hospital. He'd spent days studying the New York City transit system. He was making for a station farther east, even if it meant a fast walk through unpleasant weather and amid more unpleasant people.

  Yo, I hook you up ...

  And there were lots of them. The crowds were thicker now, more shoppers - taking advantage of the pre-Christmas season to stock up on presents, he guessed. Dressed in dark clothing, worn and shabby.

  Doctor Moreau's Swine-men, Dog-men ...

  Some police cars sped past, heading toward Marble Hill. None of them paused.

  Breathing hard, chest hurting again, he finally approached the metro entrance. Here the trains were not underground but elevated. He swiped his Metrocard and walked nonchalantly up the steep stairs and onto the platform, where he huddled as the damp wind sliced around him.

  He pulled his cap lower, swapped the reading glasses for some with different frames, then pulled his gray scarf up around his mouth; the air was frigid enough so that this didn't look odd.

  Scanning for police. No flashing lights on the streets below, no uniformed officers in the crowds or on the platform. Maybe--

  But wait.

  He noted two men in overcoats about thirty feet away on the platform. One looked his way then turned back to his companion. They stood out here, being white and dressed in conservative clothing, white shirts and ties, under the bulky coats; most of the other passengers on the platform were black or Latino or mixed, and dressed much more casually.