The Skin Collector (18 page)

And the others, repulsive to some, but not to Billy: the aromas of skin in decay, skin melting under
infection and bacteria, skin burning to ash … perhaps from lasers in operating rooms.

Or maybe hospital workers were disposing of discarded tissue and organs in an oven somewhere. He couldn’t think of this without recalling the Nazis, who had used the skin of Holocaust victims for practical purposes, like lamp shades and books. And who had devised a system of tattooing that was the simplest –
and most significant – in history.

The Rule of Skin …

Billy inhaled deeply.

He sensed some other aroma: extremely offensive. What, what?

Oh, he understood. With so many foreign workers in the medical fields, the foods the hospital prepared included those aromatic with curry and garlic.

Disgusting.

Billy finally entered the heart of the hospital, the third sub-basement. It was completely
deserted here. A perfect place to bring a victim for some deadly modding, he reflected.

The elevator would have surveillance cameras so he found the stairwell, entered it and started to climb. At the next sub-basement, number two, he paused and peeked out. It was the morgue, presently unstaffed. Apparently the medicos had not managed to kill anyone yet today.

Up another flight to the basement
level, a floor with patient rooms. Peering out through the fire door’s greasy glass, crosshatched with fine metal mesh, he could see a flash of color, then motion: a woman walking down the corridor, her back to him.

Ah, he thought, noting that while her skirt and jacket were navy blue, the scarf around her neck was red-and-white shimmery silk. It stood out like a flag in the drab setting. She
was alone. He eased through the door and followed. He noted her muscular legs – revealed clearly by the knee-length skirt – noted the slim waist, noted the hips. The hair, in a tight bun, was brown with a bit of gray. Although the sheer pantyhose revealed a few purplish veins near the ankle, her skin was superb for an older woman’s.

Billy found himself aroused, heart pounding, the blood throbbing
in his temples. And elsewhere.

Blood. The Oleander Room … blood on the carpet, blood on the floor.

Put those thoughts away. Now! Think of Lovely Girl.

He did and the urges dimmed. But dimming isn’t vanishing.

Sometimes you just gave in. Whatever the consequences might be.

Oleander …

He moved more quickly now, coming up behind her.

Thirty feet away, twenty-five …

Billy closed the distance
to about fifteen feet, ten, three, his eyes staring at her legs. It was then that he heard a woman’s no-nonsense voice behind him.

‘You, in the cap. Police! Drop the backpack. Put your hands on your head!’

About thirty feet away from the man, Amelia Sachs steadied her Glock and repeated, more harshly, ‘Backpack on the ground. Hands on your head! Now!’

The woman he’d been about to assault, only a few feet from him, turned. The confusion in her face became horror as she stared at her would-be assailant and understood what was happening. ‘No, please, no!’

The attacker was in a jacket,
not the longer thigh-length coat that the witness reported their unsub wore, but he had the same telltale stocking cap and black backpack. If she was wrong, she’d apologize. ‘Now!’ Sachs called again.

With his back to her still, he slowly lifted his hands. As his sleeve rode up she got a glimpse of a red tattoo of some kind on his left arm, starting at the back of his hand and disappearing under
his coat. A snake, a dragon?

He was raising his hands, yes, but not dropping the backpack.

Shit. He’s going to rabbit.

And, sure enough, in an instant, he tugged his hat down into a ski mask and leapt forward, grabbing the woman, spinning her around. He got his arm around her neck. She cried out and struggled. Her dark eyes were wide with fear.

Okay. He’s Unsub 11-5.

Sachs eased forward slowly,
the blade sights of the Glock searching for a clear target.

Couldn’t find one. Thanks largely to the panicked hostage, who was struggling to get away, kicking and twisting. He pressed his face close to her ear, apparently whispered something and, with wide eyes, she stopped struggling.

‘I have a gun!’ he shouted. ‘I’ll kill her. Drop your gun. Now.’

Sachs called back, ‘No.’

Because you never
dropped your weapon, you never went off target. Period. She doubted he had a gun – because he would’ve pulled it out and started firing by now – but even if he did, you never lowered your aim.

Sachs rested the sights on the new moon of his head. It was an easy shot with a static target but he was walking backward and sideways and kept ducking behind the hostage.

‘No, please don’t hurt me! Please!’
the woman cried in a low voice.

‘Shut up!’ the unsub muttered.

Reasonably, Sachs said, ‘Listen, there’s no way you’re getting out of here. Raise your hands and—’

A door nearby opened and a slim man in blue scrubs stepped into the corridor. It was just enough of a distraction to draw Sachs’s eye for an instant.

And
that
was enough for the unsub to seize his chance. He shoved his hostage directly
toward Sachs and, before she could sidestep and draw a target, he crashed through another doorway and vanished.

Sachs was sprinting past the woman in the navy suit. Terrified, she stared with wide eyes, backing up against the wall.

‘What was he—?’

No time for back and forth. Sachs flung the door open and peered in fast. No threat, no target. She shouted over her shoulder to the woman and the
medico, ‘Get back to the lobby. Now! Wait there! Call nine one one.’

‘Who—?’ the hostage called.

‘Go!’ Sachs turned and eased through the doorway the unsub had just disappeared into. She listened. A faint click – from below. Made sense; he wasn’t going to escape from the upper floors. Unsub 11-5 was their underground man.

Sachs hadn’t come here on a tactical mission so she didn’t have a radio
but she pulled her iPhone out and called 911. It was easier than going roundabout to Central Dispatch. She reported a 10-13, officer needing assistance. She supposed the hostage and the hospital worker might be calling too but they could also simply have vanished, not wanting to get involved.

Down another flight of stairs. Steady but slow. Who’s to say the guy hadn’t clicked the ground-floor
door latch to fool her and then returned to snipe away with the pistol he did, in fact, have in his pocket?

Sachs had never thought this trip would actually end up in a sighting of the unsub. She’d come here simply to see if any staffers had spotted anyone fitting the perp’s description. Rhyme had speculated that there might be an attack at this hospital. Terry Dobyns’s profile was that, as an
organized offender, the unsub would plan the attacks ahead of time. That meant some of the trace they’d found at the Chloe Moore scene might have come from the sites of future poisonings.

Ron Pulaski’s find forty minutes ago was that the Inwood marble trace Sachs had collected was unique to this portion of Manhattan and that explosives permits had been issued to the general contractor building
a new wing of the Upper Manhattan Medical Center. Other trace – the industrial cleanser quats and the adhesive that could be used in bandages – also suggested that he’d been inside the hospital to plan his attack on victim number two.

Sachs had hardly expected to actually interrupt him.

Breathing deeply, she paused at the fire door, pushed it open, dropping into a combat shooting pose. Swiveling
back and forth. This was the morgue level; there were four employees in scrubs chatting and sipping coffee, standing beside two covered gurneys.

They turned, saw the gun, then Sachs, and went wide-eyed, frozen.

She held up her shield. ‘White male in dark coat. About six feet, stocking cap or mask. Slim build. Come by here?’

‘No.’

‘How long you been here?’

‘Ten, fifteen min—’

‘Get inside
and lock the door.’

One attendant started to push the gurney through the door. Sachs called, ‘Only the live ones.’

Back to the dim stairwell. Down more stairs. She hit the lowest sub-basement. He had to’ve come here.

Go.

Fast.

When you move, they can’t getcha …

She pushed through the door, swinging the muzzle right and left.

This floor was deserted, devoted mostly to infrastructure and
storerooms, it seemed.

She kept swiveling, right, left. Because in the back of her mind was the persistent thought that maybe this wasn’t an escape at all. Maybe it was a trap. Maybe he was hiding here to kill a pursuer.

She remembered the line from the book
Serial Cities
, about Rhyme:

Experts in law enforcement universally voice the opinion of Lincoln Rhyme that his greatest skill was his
ability to anticipate what the criminals he’s pursuing will do next.

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.’

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.