The Skin Collector

by Jeffery Deaver

  'Lovely Girl?'

  'Stolen from me. Not physically. But mentally. You'd been kidnapped by Amelia and Lincoln. By the wrong thinkers of the world. You don't remember me. Of course you don't. We met a long time ago. Ages. We were young. You were living in Larchwood, the militia run by Mr and Mrs Stone.'

  Pam recalled Edward and Katherine Stone. Brilliant radicals who'd fled Chicago after advocating a violent overthrow of the federal government. Pam's mother, Charlotte Willoughby, had fallen under their sway after her husband, Pam's father, died in a UN peacekeeping operation.

  'You were six or so. I was a few years older. My aunt and uncle came to Missouri to meet with the Stones about an anti-abortion campaign. A few years later my uncle wanted to solidify the connection between the Larchwood militia and the American Families First Council, so Stone and my uncle arranged our marriage.'

  'What?'

  'You were my Lovely Girl. You'd grow up to be my woman and the mother of our children.'

  'Like I was some kind of cow, some kind of fu--'

  Striking like a snake, he jabbed his fist into her cheek, bone to bone. She inhaled at the pain.

  'I won't warn you again. I'm your man and I'm in charge. Understand?'

  She cringed and nodded.

  He raged, 'You have no idea what I've lived through. They took you away from me. They brainwashed you. It was like my world ended.'

  That would be when Pam, her mother and stepfather came to New York a few years ago. Her parents had another terror plot in mind but Lincoln and Amelia stopped it. Her stepfather was killed, her mother arrested. Pam was rescued and went into foster care in the city.

  She thought back to the day when she and Seth had met. Yes, she'd thought he seemed too familiar, too nice, too infatuated. But she'd fallen hard anyway. (All right, Pam now admitted - maybe Amelia was right that, thanks to her early years, she was desperate for affection, for love. And so she'd ignored what she should have noticed.)

  Pam now stared at the tattoo gun, the vials of poison. Recalled that his victims had died in agony.

  What delightful toxin had he picked for her?

  That's what was coming next, of course. He'd kill her because, Lincoln had said, she might have to be a witness in the trial against the Stantons. And he'd kill her because their plan had failed and his aunt and uncle would be in jail for the rest of their lives.

  He wanted revenge.

  He now looked once more at the design he'd painted on her cheek in her own blood.

  Happy ...

  She thought of the time they'd sat on this very couch one rainy Sunday, a rerun of Seinfeld on TV, Seth kissing her for the first time.

  And Pam, thinking: I was falling in love.

  A lie. All a lie. She recalled the months he'd spent in London, in a training program for an ad agency opening an office here. Bullshit. He was back with his aunt and uncle planning the attack. And, after he'd supposedly returned from the UK, she hadn't thought anything his odd behaviors. Assignments that kept him out all hours, phone calls he never took in her presence, having to leave for meetings at a minute's notice, never taking her to meet his co-workers, never inviting her to the office. How they'd communicate through brief texts, not phone calls. But she hadn't been suspicious. She loved him, and Seth would never have done anything to hurt her.

  She forced the crying to stop. This was easier than she'd thought. Anger froze the tears.

  Seth ... Billy began filling the tube with a liquid from a bottle.

  She couldn't imagine what it would be like to die that way. Pain. Nausea, fire in her belly, stabbing up to her jaw, puking, puking, but finding no relief. Her skin melting, blood from her mouth, nose, eyes ...

  He was musing, 'Feel bad about my cousin. Josh, poor Josh. A shame about him. The others? No worries there. My uncle was going to die soon. That was on the agenda. I was going to kill my aunt too as soon as we got back to Illinois. Blame them both on some homeless guy, an illegal probably. But once I saw the pressure in the pipes hadn't been shut off, I knew Lincoln Rhyme had figured the plan out and I had to give them up. I left a note with the address of the hotel at the scene. That's how Lincoln found them.'

  He worked meticulously, filling the tube with the care of a surgeon, which he was, in a way, she reflected. The battery-powered tattoo gun was spotless. After he assembled the device he sat back and tugged her shirt up to below her breasts. He looked over her body, obsessed, it seemed, with her skin. She recoiled when he stroked her below the navel. As if the contact were not via his fingers but with the centipede's crimson legs.

  But there seemed nothing sexual about the touch. He was fascinated only with her flesh itself.

  She asked, 'Who was it? That you killed in the water tunnel?'

  'Hey, hold on there!' Billy said.

  Pam winced. Was he going to hit her?

  'I didn't kill him. Your friend did. Lincoln Rhyme. He's the one who made the announcement that the water pressure was shut off. But I was suspicious. So I got some insurance. I met a homeless man underground a few days ago. Nathan. One of the mole people. You ever heard about them? I thought it'd be helpful to use him. I gave him a pair of coveralls and did a fast tattoo of a centipede that matched mine, on his left arm. I knew where he hung out - near the Belvedere - so before I drilled into the pipe I found him.

  'I offered him a thousand dollars to help me drill a hole to help me test the water. He agreed. But' - Billy shook his head - 'I was right. The city was bluffing about cutting down the pressure. As soon as he drilled through the pipe, the stream of water cut him in half.' He shivered. 'There was nothing left of his head and chest. It was pretty tough to see.'

  At least he had a spark of sympathy.

  'Knowing that that might've been me.'

  Or maybe not.

  'That told me it was time to bail. The police'll find out soon enough it wasn't me but I've bought some time. Okay, time to bleed ...' Then he said something else. She couldn't quite hear. It seemed to be 'Oleander.'

  He rose, looked her over. Then he bent down and gripped the button of her jeans. Pop, it opened and the zipper came down.

  No, no, he wasn't going to take her. She'd rip his precious skin off with her teeth before he got close. Never.

  With a fast sweep, down came the denim.

  She tensed, ready to attack.

  But he didn't touch her there. He brushed the smooth flesh of her thighs. He was interested only in finding an appropriate part of her body on which to tattoo his deadly message, it seemed.

  'Nice, nice ...'

  Pam recalled Amelia talking about the code the killer was tattooing onto his victims. And she wondered what message he was going to leave on her body.

  He picked up the gun and turned it on.

  Bzzzz.

  He touched it to her skin. The sensation was a tickle.

  Then came the pain.

  CHAPTER 70

  The point of the American Families First Council attack was now clear.

  Among the documents in the dead unsub's pocket, in addition to the name of the Stantons' hotel, Sachs had found a rambling letter.

  It reminded Rhyme of the Unabomber's manifesto - a diatribe against modern society. The difference, though, was that the unsub's screed didn't offer up the AFFC's own racist and fundamentalist views; just the opposite, in fact. The document, intended to be found by the police after the citywide poisoning, purported to be written by the enemy - some unnamed coalition of black and Latino activists, affiliated with Muslim fundamentalists, all of whom were taking credit for the poisoning of New York City to get even with the white capitalist oppressors. The statement called for an uprising against them, proclaiming that the poison attack was just the start.

  Characterizing the attack in this way was rather clever, Rhyme decided. It would take suspicion off the AFFC and would galvanize sentiment against the council's enemies. It would also cause immeasurable damage to the Sodom of New York City, bastion of globalization, mixed races
and liberalism.

  Rhyme suspected there was more at work as well. 'Power play within the militia movement? If word gets around that AFFC pulled this off, their stock would rise through the roof.'

  A call came in from the federal building in Manhattan.

  'The Stantons are not doin' the talkie-talkie, Lincoln,' said Fred Dellray, the FBI agent who was running the federal side of the attempted attack. The couple and their son were now in federal custody but apparently not - to translate Dellray's distinctive lingo - cooperating at all.

  'Well, sweat 'em or something, Fred. I want to know who the hell our unsub was. Prints came back negative and he wasn't in CODIS.'

  'I saw those pictures of your boy in the tunnel, after the run-in with the H two Oh. My, my, that was a Breaking Bad moment, no? How fast they think that water was going?'

  He was on speaker and, from a nearby evidence table, Sachs called, 'They don't know, Fred, but after it cut him in half it also cut through a concrete wall and a steam pipe on the other side. I had to haul ass out of there 'fore I got scalded.'

  'You catch anything helpful in the tunnel?'

  'Got a few things, not much. It was pretty much toast. Well, more oatmeal than toast, what with the steam and water.'

  She explained about the letter, intended to start a race riot.

  The agent sighed. 'Just when you think the world's a-changin' ...'

  'We'll work up the evidence, Fred, and be in touch.'

  'Thanks mightily.'

  They disconnected and Sachs returned to helping Mel Cooper analyze the trace and isolate and run the friction ridges from the Stantons' hotel suite. Regarding the prints, though, only one set was on file, though they knew the perpetrator's identity already: Joshua Stanton had a prior in Clayton County for assaulting a gay man. Hate crime.

  Rhyme glanced up at the crime scene pictures, immune to the gruesome images. He looked once more at the stark tattoo, the centipede in red on the left arm. The eyes eerily human. It was, as Sachs had told him, very well done. Had he inked it himself? Rhyme wondered. Or was it painted by a friend? The unsub probably. Point of pride.

  Sachs took a phone call.

  'No, no,' she whispered, drawing the attention of everybody in the room. Her face revealed dismay.

  What now? Rhyme wondered, frowning.

  She disconnected. Looked at them all.

  'Lon's taken a turn for the worse. He went into cardiac arrest. They've revived him but it's not looking good. I should be with Rachel.'

  'You go on, Sachs. We'll take care of this.' Rhyme hesitated. Then asked: 'You want to give Pam a call and see if she wants to go with you? She always liked Lon.'

  Pulling her coat off the hook, Sachs debated. Finally she said, 'Naw. Frankly, I don't think I could handle any more rejection.'

  CHAPTER 71

  Apparently, though, Billy wasn't going to kill her.

  Not yet, at any rate.

  It was ink, not poison, he'd loaded into the tattoo gun.

  'Stop fidgeting,' he instructed. He was on his knees in front of the couch she lay on.

  Pam said, 'My hands hurt behind me. Please. Undo the tape. Please.'

  'No.'

  'Just tape them in front of me.'

  'No. Stay still.' He glared and she stopped squirming.

  'What the fuck are--'

  Another fierce slap. 'We have an image to maintain. Do you understand me? You will never use the F word and you will never take that tone!' He gripped her hair and shook her head like prey in a fox's mouth. 'From now on your role is to be my woman. Our people will see you by my side. The loyal wife.'

  He returned to the inking.

  Pam thought of screaming but she was sure he'd beat the crap out of her if she tried. Besides, there was no one else in the building. One unit was empty and the other tenants were on a cruise.

  He was speaking to her absently. 'We'll have to go deep underground for a while. My aunt and uncle won't give me up. But my cousin, Joshua? It's just a matter of time until he gets tricked into telling them everything he knows. Me included. We can't go back to Southern Illinois. Your friend Lincoln will have the FBI picking up all the senior people at the AFFC now. And he'll suspect the Larchwood crowd again, so Missouri's out. We'll have to go someplace else. Maybe the Patriot Assembly in upstate New York. They're pretty much off the grid.' He turned to her. 'Or Texas. There're people there who remember my parents as martyred freedom fighters. We could live with them.'

  'But, Seth--'

  'We'll lie low for a few years. Call me "Seth" again and I'll hurt you. I can do tattooing work for cash. You can teach Sunday school. Little by little we can reemerge. New identities. The AFFC's over now, but maybe it's just as well - we'll move on. Start a new movement. And do a hell of a better job. We'll do it the right way. We'll place our women into schools - and I don't just mean church schools. I mean public and private. Get the kids young. Break them in. We men will run for office, low level, cities and counties - at first. We'll start local and then move up. Oh, it's going to be a whole new world. You don't think that way now. But you'll be proud to be part of it.'

  He lifted the machine off her leg, looked over the work and returned to inking her.

  'My uncle was backward in a lot of ways. But he had one moment of genius. He came up with the Rule of Skin. He'd lecture about it all over the country - at other militias, at revival meetings, at churches, at hunting camps.' Billy's eyes shone. 'The Rule of Skin ... It's brilliant. Think about it: Skin tells us about our physical health, right? It's flushed or pale. Glowing or dull. Shrunken or swollen. Broken out or clear ... And it tells us our spiritual development too. And intellectual. And emotional. White is good and smart and noble. Black and brown and yellow are subversive and dangerous.'

  'You can't be serious!'

  He made a fist and Pam cringed and fell silent.

  'You want proof. The other day I was in the Bronx and this guy stopped me. A young man, I don't know. About your age. Black. He had keloids on his face - scars, like tattoos. They were beautiful. A real artist had done them.' His eyes looked off slightly. 'And you know why he stopped me? To sell me drugs. That's the truth about people like that. The Rule of Skin. You can't fool it.'

  Pam laughed bitterly. 'A black kid tried to sell you drugs in the Bronx? Guess what? Go to West Virginia and a white kid'll try to sell you drugs.'

  Billy wasn't listening. 'There's been an argument about Hitler: whether he genuinely hated Jews and Gypsies and gays and wanted to make the world a better place by eliminating them. Or whether he didn't actually care but thought that German citizens hated them, so he used that hate and fear to seize power.'

  'You're holding up Hitler as a role model?'

  'There are worse choices.'

  'So? What is it for you, Billy? Do you believe in the Rule of Skin or are you using it for power, for yourself, your ego?'

  'Isn't it clear?' He gave a laugh. 'You're smarter than that, Pam.'

  She said nothing and he dabbed the tears of pain off her cheeks. And she did know the answer. And something occurred to her, hit her like one of his blows. It had to do with the blog she and Seth had worked on together. She whispered, 'Our blog? That's the opposite of everything you're saying. What ... what did you create the blog for?'

  'What do you think? Everybody who posts a favorable comment is on our list. Pro-abortion, pro food stamps, pro immigration reform. Their day of judgment's coming.'

  There were probably fifteen thousand people who'd posted something on the site. What was going to happen to them? Would Billy's followers track them down and kill them? Firebomb their houses or apartments?

  Billy set the tattoo gun aside, smeared Vaseline on the ink on her thighs and blotted.

  He smiled and said, 'Look. What do you think?'

  Reading upside down, she saw two words on the front of her thighs.

  PAM

  WIL

  What the hell was he doing? What did he mean?

  And he p
ulled his jeans down. She read similar tattoos on his thighs, in matching type fonts.

  ELA

  LIAM

  When read together:

  PAM ELA

  WIL LIAM

  'We call them splitters. Lovers get parts of their names tattooed on each other. They can only be read when they're together. It's us, see? Separately, we're missing something. Together, we're whole.' What passed for a smile crossed his sallow face.

  'Lovers?' she whispered. Looking at his inking - it'd been done years ago.

  He was gazing at her confused face. He pulled up his, then her pants, and zippered and buttoned them.

  'I knew someday I'd get you back.' Billy was gesturing at the tattoos. '"Pamela", "William". Nice touch, don't you think? Our names will be whole when we lie together to make our children.'

  He noted her expression of dismay. 'What's that look about?' As if speaking to a daughter upset about a bad day at school.

  'I loved you!' she cried.

  'No, you loved somebody who was part of the cancer of this country.' His eyes softened and he whispered, 'What about me, Pam? The woman I've loved all my life turns out to be the enemy? They took your mind and heart away from me.'

  'Nobody changed me. I never believed what my mother did. What you believe.'

  He stroked her hair, smiling, murmuring, 'You were brainwashed. I understand that. I'll fix you, honey. I'll bring you back into the fold. Now let's go pack.'

  'All right, all right.'

  He pulled her to her feet.

  She turned and looked into his eyes. 'You know, Billy,' she said in a soft voice.

  'What?' He seemed pleased to note her smile.

  'You should've checked my pockets.'

  Pam swung her right arm toward his face as hard as she could, holding tight, fiercely tight, to the box cutter she'd used to cut through the duct tape - the same as she'd carried in her hip pocket ever since those terrible days in Larchwood.

  The blade connected with Billy's cheek and mouth. Not like the slush sound of a stabbing in movies. Only the silent cutting of flesh.

  As he howled and gripped his face, spinning away, Pam leapt over the coffee table and headed for the front door, calling, 'Okay, there's a mod for you, asshole.'

  CHAPTER 72

  Pam's hands were slick with Billy's blood, but she got the door open and stumbled into the front hallway of the building.