The Skin Collector

by Jeffery Deaver

  'You know, a nyrad.' Like, obviously.

  Oh. Sure. Nyrad.

  Sellitto now looked up and realized he'd been caught staring at the woman's chest.

  'I--'

  'It's okay. They're there to be looked at. Plural. Works, I mean. Not boobs.'

  'I--'

  'You just said that. I'm not thinking you're a dirty old man. And you're about to ask if they hurt.'

  'Naw, I figure they hurt.'

  'They did. But what in life doesn't, if it's important?'

  Sex, dinner and collaring a prick of a criminal, Sellitto thought. Most of the time those didn't hurt. But he shrugged. 'What I was going to ask was, you draw them yourself? Design them, I mean.'

  'No. I went to an artist in Boston. The best on the East Coast. I just wanted Quetzalcoatl. Mexican god.' Her finger touched the snake on her chest. 'And we talked for a couple of days and she got to know me. She did the plumed serpent and recommended the constellations. I got Dorothy's shoes too. She smiled. Sellitto smiled. 'I don't mean to be overly political, except I do. See, that's how women artists handle an inking. A man goes into a male artist and says I want a chain, a death's-head, a flag. And out he comes with a chain, a death's-head or a flag. Women take a different approach. Less impulsive, less instant, more thoughtful.'

  Sellitto muttered, 'Kinda like life in general. Men and women, I mean.' The questions about Unsub 11-5 still needed to be answered. But he now asked, 'Hey, just curious, you know. How'd you get into this business?'

  'You mean, aside from the skin art, I seem like a schoolteacher?'

  'Yeah.'

  'I was a schoolteacher.' Thomson let the pause linger. Timing. 'Middle school. Now, there's a DMZ for you. You know, a no-man's-land between the hormones to the south and the attitudes to the north.'

  'I got a kid. A boy. He's outta college now. But he had to get to that age, you know.'

  She nodded. 'It wasn't flying for me. I went to get a work at a parlor in town and, hard to explain, it set me free. I quit the school and opened a shop. Now I do skin art and canvas painting too. Shows in SoHo, uptown too. Couldn't've done it, though, if I hadn't gotten inked in the first place.'

  'Impressive.'

  'Thanks. Now you were asking about the American Eagle machine.'

  Thomson's was the one shop in the Tri-State area that sold parts and needles for that model. She also had a used model for sale. To Sellitto it looked gnarly, dangerous. Like a ray gun from some weird science-fiction flick.

  'Can I ask? Why're you interested?'

  The detective debated. He decided he owed it to her to tell all. Maybe it was that she was so devoted to the art. Or that she had a really incredible chest. He told her what 11-5 was doing.

  'No, my God, no.' Her eyes were as wide as the Mexican snakebird's were narrow. 'Somebody's actually doing that, killing people with a machine?' She shuddered and for a moment Thomson, for all her imposing creatures and Wizard of Oz shoes, didn't seem mysterious or more than human at all. She seemed vulnerable and small. TT Gordon had had the same reaction - a sense of betrayal that somebody in their close-knit profession would use his talent to kill and do so in a particularly horrific way.

  'Afraid so.'

  'The American Eagles,' she said. 'Old machines, not as reliable as the new ones. One of the first portables.'

  'That's what TT said.'

  Thomson nodded. 'He's a good guy. You're lucky he's helping you. And I think I can help you too. Nobody's ever bought a machine here but about a week ago a man came in and bought some needles for an American Eagle.' She leaned forward, resting her hands on the counter. The shiny black ring on her right index finger turned out to be ink.

  'I didn't pay much attention. Late twenties, thirties. White. Had a cap on, dark, and a scarf around his neck. It came up high, almost covering his chin. Sunglasses too. Which he didn't need because the weather was as bad as now. That, the glasses, seemed hipster and uncool. But we get imagistas in here a lot. It's a fine line between posing with ink and being real with ink.'

  Imagistas. Clever.

  Sellitto showed her the Identi-Kit pic.

  Thomson shrugged. 'Could be. Again, not paying much attention. Oh, but one thing I remember. He wasn't inked that I could see. Wasn't pierced either. Most skin artists're pretty modded.'

  'He has one on his arm. Maybe a dragon, some creature. In red. Does that mean anything?'

  The snake-and-bird woman shook her head. 'No - after that book, that thriller, a lot of people wanted dragons. Copycats. No significance that I know.'

  He then asked, 'You know anything significant about a tattoo of the words "the second"? Or "fort"Y? They mean anything in the skin art world?'

  'No, not that I've ever heard.'

  He displayed pictures of the tattoos.

  'Well,' she said. 'Old English font. That's hard to do. And the lesions, the raised part? That was because of the poison?'

  'Yeah.'

  'Well, whatever else, he's good. Real good.'

  'And he worked fast. Probably did that in ten, fifteen minutes.'

  'Really?' She seemed astonished. 'And the scarification too? The scalloped border?'

  'All in ten or fifteen. Does that, or the style, give you any idea who this guy might be?'

  'Not really ... But I don't see the outlines.'

  'No, TT said he used a bloodline. Freehand.'

  'Then nobody I know could do a work like that in fifteen minutes. And I know all the talented people in town. That's one hell of an artist you're dealing with.'

  'TT said he was from out of town but didn't know where.'

  'Well, you don't see that font much in the area. But I couldn't tell you what's hot now in Albany - or Norwalk or Trenton. My clientele's pretty much downtown Manhattan.'

  'He paid cash for the needles, right?'

  Why bother to ask?

  'Right.'

  'Any chance you'd still have the money? For prints.'

  'No. But it wouldn't matter. He wore gloves.'

  Natch ...

  'I thought that was a little weird too. But not suspicious weird, you know?'

  Imagistas.

  'Did he say anything?'

  'To me? No. Other than to ask for the needles.'

  Sellitto, paying attention to that first sentence. 'But?'

  'When he was leaving he got a call on his mobile. After I'd rung him up I stepped into the back room. When he was walking out the door he said, "Yeah, the Belvedere." And then I think he said "address". Anyway, that's what I thought. But it might've been "bella dear" or something else.'

  Sellitto wrote this down. Asked the standard: 'Anything else you can think of?'

  'No, I'm afraid not.'

  It was usually afraid not or no or don't think so. But at least Thomson had thought about the question and was being honest.

  He thanked her and, with a last glance at Quetzawhatever on her chest, headed back into the sleet, speed-dialing Rhyme to tell him don't get your fucking hopes up but he might have a lead.

  CHAPTER 35

  A good workout.

  As he walked from his health club back to his apartment on East 52nd Street to collect his car, Braden Alexander was counting the crunches he'd done. He'd given up after a hundred.

  Counting them, that is. The crunches themselves? Plenty. He'd forgotten how many.

  Alexander had a sedentary job - writing code for one of the big investment firms (one that actually had not been the subject of an investigation) - and the thirty-seven-year-old was determined to stay in good shape, despite the eight-hour days at his workstation - and the one-hour reverse commute to Jersey, where his company's IT headquarters building was located.

  And the curls? With the thirty-pound bells? Maybe two hundred. Damn, he sure felt it. He decided he'd take it a bit easier tomorrow. No need to push too far. It was more important to be consistent, Alexander knew. Every day he made the trek from his apartment west to the health club on Sixth Avenue. Every day, the stati
onary bike and curls and squats and, yeah, crunches, crunches, crunches ... What do we think, 150?

  Probably.

  He glanced at himself in a window and thought: The weight's okay. His skin seemed a little pale. Not so good, that. He and his family would get to an island soon. Maybe after Thanksgiving. Anyway, who wouldn't look sickly on a day like this? The sleet had let up but the light was gray and anemic. He was actually looking forward to getting into his cubicle. He found it cozy, a word he wouldn't use with anybody but his wife.

  Today there was something else to look forward to. He'd be picking up a bicycle at his brother's house in Paramus. Joey'd gotten a new mountain bike and was giving his old one to Alexander's son. The boy was ecstatic and had texted twice from school, just to see how 'everything was going?'

  The impatience of youth.

  He looked south and caught sight of the new Trade Tower, or whatever it was going to be called. He'd been working at his first job, crunching code for a bank, when the attack had happened, 2001. The new structure was impressive, architecturally more interesting than the simple rectangles of its predecessors. Still, nothing could ever match their grandeur, their style.

  What a time that was. His first son had been born the day after the attack. Alexander and his wife had abandoned plans to name him after her father and had picked instead Emery, after the architectural firm Emery Roth & Sons, which along with Minoru Yamasaki had designed the original Trade Towers.

  Alexander continued east back toward his apartment, where he'd collect his car and head to work. As he paused for a red light he happened to look back and caught a glimpse of someone behind him, head down. Some guy, young, in dark clothes and stocking cap. A bag or backpack on his shoulder. Was he the same one who'd been sitting in a coffee shop across the street from the health club?

  He following me?

  Alexander had lived in the city for fifteen years. He considered New York the safest urban area on earth. But he wasn't a fool, either. He made his living because of bad guys. When he'd started as a programmer some years ago most of his work had been to hack together code that made the servers run more smoothly, expanded web traffic and allowed the various operating systems to talk to each other without stuttering. Over the years, though, he'd developed the specialty of security. Commercial hackers, terrorists and punks with too much time on their hands and too many cells in their brains now preyed on banking institutions like his employer with increasingly bold and brilliant attacks.

  That had become Alexander's specialty, throwing nails in the path of some pretty smart and pretty nasty hackers.

  He'd heard of some computer security pros who'd been physically attacked. He sometimes wondered if he was at personal risk. He had no specific knowledge that any hackers knew his name but he also was aware that it was impossible to keep all information about yourself hidden from someone with enough drive to track you down.

  Near his apartment building Alexander paused and, on the pretext of making a phone call, glanced back once more. The man in the cap and coat continued following, head down. He didn't seem to be paying any attention to Alexander. Then without a pause the supposed hit hacker walked into a building across the street, an old one, now a commercial space, with a For Rent sign pasted across a dirty window. Maybe he was a Realtor or new tenant. Or a janitor examining a temperamental boiler - it was supposed to be another bone-chilling evening.

  Amused at his own wasted concern, Alexander continued on to his building and to the entrance to the parking garage, where they kept the Subaru. The parking space was a luxury - it alone cost more than his first apartment. But a guaranteed slot in the city that brought the world alternate-side-of-the-street parking? Didn't get any better than that - except it did: The space was enclosed, so he never had to shovel snow or scrape ice. Extremely enclosed, in fact. The space was in the third sub-basement.

  He now waved to the cashier, who called, 'Hey, Mr Alexander. When's it gonna let up? You know what I mean?' The skinny, gray-complexioned man gazed up at the sky.

  He'd said virtually the same thing every day for the past week.

  Alexander grinned and shrugged. He descended the spiral ramp of the dim place.

  On the bottom floor, the Subie's floor, as his wife had dubbed the vehicle, Alexander walked under the low ceiling toward where the front of his green car peeked out. The garage - this floor at least - seemed completely deserted. But he wasn't feeling uneasy anymore, now that the imaginary killer shadowing him had disappeared into the building across the street. Besides, no mugger - or hacker intent on breaking Alexander's typing fingers - would dare risk an attack here. The only way in was past the watchful attendant.

  You know what I mean? ...

  As he approached the Subaru he pulled his keys out and hit the unlock button on the fob. The lights flashed. He continued on to the car, thinking of the bike for his son. He was looking forward to riding his own ten-speed with Emery through Central Park this weekend.

  He was smiling at the prospective pleasure when a man stepped casually out from behind a wall to Alexander's right and punched him in the neck.

  'The hell--?' Alexander gasped and spun around.

  Oh, Christ, Christ ... The guy wore gray coveralls like a repairman or utility worker but his face looked like an alien's - encased in a tight yellowish mask, latex.

  Then he saw the hypodermic needle in the gloved, yellow hand.

  Alexander touched his neck, which stung.

  He'd poked him with something! The first thing he thought was: AIDS.

  Some kind of psycho. No, no, no ...

  Then he thought: Nobody's going to get away with this crap. Alexander had taken several self-defense courses and a kickboxing class at the gym. Not to mention being racked from the thousands of crunches and curls. He turned to face the guy and planted his feet firmly on the ground, drawing back his right arm, recalling how to hit fast and follow up.

  One, two, feint, hit.

  One, two ...

  But his arm wasn't behaving. It was heavy. Too heavy even to lift. And he noted the terrible panic, the shock, fading. He didn't even feel scared at all anymore.

  And when the dim light grew dimmer he understood:

  No, not tainted blood. Of course not. It was a sedative of some kind the asshole had injected him with. Sure, sure, this was the guy who'd been following him. He'd slipped down here from the building across the street. But how ...? Oh, there. There was a small metal access door open. Behind it darkness, like a tunnel or a basement. And the guy's mission? To kidnap Alexander. To get him to reveal codes or security flaws in his clients' programs.

  'Ahhhl talll you ... whah ...' Alexander was speaking. Trying to speak.

  Say it! Come on! I'll tell you what you want. Just let me go.

  'Lllll. Tllll. You waaaaa ...'

  The syllables were falling apart.

  Then the words were just gurgling from his throat.

  He was surprised to find he wasn't standing any longer but sitting down, paralyzed, staring up at the masked freak. Looking around at his surroundings. The Subie's tire. A Hershey bar wrapper. An oval of dried dog pee.

  The attacker bent down over a backpack.

  As the darkness grew, serious darkness now, Alexander squinted, looking at a weird tattoo on the man's left arm. A snake ... no, a centipede. With a human face.

  Then he was lying on his back, too weak even to sit up any longer. The attacker roughly tugged Alexander's wrists behind his back and cuffed them. Rolled him over on his back once more.

  But just because this guy had the melted skin mask and a macabre tattoo didn't mean he was a psychotic killer. No, he just wanted to get the codes to the Livingston Associates main server. Or the password to crack the Bank of Eastern Nassau's security lock-out system.

  Sure.

  Not a wacko.

  This was business was all. Only business. They didn't want to hurt him. They were after data? Fine, he'd give them data. Passcodes? They'd get passcodes.r />
  Only business, right?

  But then why was he lifting Alexander's jacket and shirt and staring at his abdomen intently? And reaching forward and stroking the skin with a rigid, probing finger?

  Has to be ... only ...

  Blackness enwrapped him completely.

  CHAPTER 36

  'Where are you, Sachs?'

  'Almost there.' Her voice was echoing through the speaker in Rhyme's parlor. The criminalist was here with Pulaski and Cooper, while Amelia Sachs was presently streaking across Central Park, one of the traverses, headed east. 'Hanging up. Gotta drive.'

  It turned out there were forty-eight places in Manhattan in which 'Belvedere' figured in the name. This had been the conclusion of yet another team that Lon Sellitto had assembled at One Police Plaza. There'd been the Find-the-Out-of-Print-Book team, now disbanded. Then the current What-the-Fuck-Do-the-Words-the-Second-and-Forty-Mean team, still active.

  Now the Which-Belvedere-Is-It team, assembled thanks to skin artist Anne Thomson's fortuitous eavesdropping.

  Four dozen instances of Belvedere in Manhattan (which seemed to be 11-5's preferred hunting borough; besides, you can't search everywhere).

  Delis, apartment buildings, transport companies, boutiques, a cab company, a ferry.

  An escort service.

  A half hour ago, in Rhyme's parlor, he and Sachs, along with Sellitto, Cooper and Pulaski, had debated which of the Belvederes were the most likely to be connected to the unsub. Of course, the name might have nothing to do with the next or a future target. It could be where he lived, or near where he lived, or his dry cleaner or where he boarded his cat. Or a business he was curious about. But, being cautious, they assumed it was a kill site and wanted to get tac teams to the most likely ones ASAP.

  They'd decided three were good candidates for an attack. One was a deserted warehouse in the Chelsea area of Manhattan - north of Greenwich Village. It featured an extensive labyrinth of underground passages and storerooms. Perfect for their unsub's purposes, though Cooper had made the point that it might be a little too deserted. 'He needs to get a victim from somewhere.'

  Rhyme considered this but tapped into some CCTV images there and noted that it had more pedestrian traffic than you'd think - including even some joggers out on this blustery day.