The Skin Collector (31 page)

Rhyme looked up. ‘One of who?’

‘You’re modded.’

‘How’s that?’

He pointed to Rhyme’s arm, where scars were prominent, from the surgery to restore motion to his right arm and hand. ‘Looks
like Mount Everest, those scars there. Upside down to you.’

True, curiously, the triangular pattern did look like the famous mountain.

‘You want me to fill it in, just let me know. Or I could do something else. Oh, dude, I know. I could add a bird.’ He nodded toward the window. ‘One of those hawks or whatever they are. Flying over the mountains.’

Rhyme laughed. What a crazy thought. Then his
eyes strayed to the peregrine falcons. There
was
something intriguing about the idea.

‘Trauma to the skin is contraindicated for someone in his condition.’ Thom was in the doorway, arms crossed.

Gordon nodded. ‘Guess that means no.’

‘No.’

He looked around the room. ‘Well, anybody else?’

‘My mother would kill me,’ near-middle-aged Mel Cooper said.

‘My wife,’ Pulaski said.

Amelia Sachs only
shook her head.

Thom said, ‘I’ll stick with the one I have.’

‘What?’ Sachs asked, laughing. But the aide said nothing more.

‘Okay, but you’ve got my number. Good luck, dudes.’

Then the man was gone.

The team was looking at the images of the tattoos once more. Lon Sellitto wasn’t picking up so Sachs called Major Cases and had the team at headquarters add ‘17th’ to the list of numbers they
were searching for.

Just after she’d disconnected, her phone hummed again and she answered. Rhyme saw immediately that she stiffened. She asked breathlessly, ‘What? You have somebody on the way?’

She slammed the disconnect button and looked at Rhyme, eyes wide. ‘That was a sergeant at the Eight-Four. A neighbor just called in a nine one one, intruder outside Pam’s apartment. White male in a
stocking cap and short gray coat. Seemed to be wearing a mask. Yellow. Jesus.’

Sachs flipped open her phone and hit a speed-dial button.

Answer!

Please answer! Sachs gripped her mobile hard and shivered in hopeless rage when Pam’s voice mail came on.

‘If you’re at home, Pam, get out of your house! Now! Go to the Eighty-Fourth Precinct. Gold Street. I think the perp in our case is at your place.’

Her eyes met Rhyme’s, his face equally troubled, and she jammed her finger onto the redial button.

Rhyme asked, ‘Is she
working? Or at school?’

‘I don’t know. She works odd hours. And’s in school part-time this semester.’

Ron Pulaski called, ‘There should be a unit there in seven, eight minutes.’

But the question: Is it too late?

The hollow buzzing of the phone filled the speaker.

Goddamn it. Voice mail once more.

No, no …

‘Sachs—’

She ignored Rhyme and hit the redial button again. Why the hell hadn’t they
put protection on Pam full-time? True, their unsub’s targets – like the Bone Collector’s – were random and the Skin Collector surely didn’t even know she existed, they’d assumed. But now, of course, he’d decided to target not only those tracking him down, but their friends and family too. It wouldn’t be impossible to discover Pam’s relationship to Rhyme and Sachs. Why hadn’t—

Click.
‘Amelia,’
Pam said, breathless. ‘I got your message. But I’m not home. I’m at work.’

Sachs lowered her head. Thank you, thank you …

‘But Seth’s there! He’s there now. He’s waiting for me. We’re going out later. Amelia, what … what should we do?’

Sachs got his mobile and spun to Pulaski. ‘Call Seth!’ She shouted the number across the room. The young officer dialed fast.

‘The doors are locked, Pam?’

‘Yes, but … Oh, Amelia. Are police there?’

‘They’re on their way. Stay where you are. And—’

‘Stay where I am? I’m going home. I’m going there now.’

‘No. Don’t do that.’

Pam’s voice was ragged, accusatory. ‘Why’s he doing this? Why is he at
my
apartment?’

‘Stay where—’

The girl hung up.

‘It’s ringing.’ Pulaski’s expression changed instantly.

‘Speaker,’ Rhyme snapped.

The young officer hit
the button. Seth’s voice came from the line. ‘Hello?’

‘Seth, it’s Lincoln Rhyme.’

‘Hey, how—’

‘Listen to me carefully. Get out. Somebody’s breaking into the apartment. Get out now!’

‘Here? What do you mean? Is Pam all right?’

‘She’s okay. Police are coming but you have to get out. Drop whatever you’re doing and leave. Go out the front door and get to the Eighty-Fourth Precinct. It’s on Gold
Street. Or at least some populated place. Call Amelia or me as soon as—’

Seth’s next words were muted, as if he was turning and the phone was no longer next to his mouth. ‘Hey!’

A sound like breaking glass could be heard and another voice, a man’s: ‘You. Put the phone down.’

‘The hell’re you—’

Then several thuds. Seth screamed.

And the line went dead.

The squad cars beat Amelia Sachs to Pam’s apartment.

But not by much.

Sachs had kept the gears low in her Torino, the RPMs high, and her foot largely off the brake as she sped to Brooklyn Heights. Sidney Place, a narrow street ending at State, runs north, one way, but that didn’t stop Sachs from pounding the Ford the opposite way, sending several oncoming cars up on the sidewalk,
squeezing for protection between the many trees here. One rattled elderly driver scraped a fender on the stairs of St Charles Borromeo church, tall and red as a fire truck.

Sachs’s fierce eyes, more than the blue dashboard flasher, cleared the way with little resistance.

Pam’s apartment building was shabbier than most here, a three-story walk-up, one of the few gray buildings in a neighborhood
of crimson stone. Sachs aimed for the semicircle of police vehicles and an ambulance. She laid on the horn – no siren in the Torino – and parted the craning-neck crowd then gave up and parked. She sprinted to the door, noting that the ambulance door was open but there were no EMS techs nearby. Bad sign. Were they working away desperately on Seth?

Or was he dead?

In Pam’s apartment hallway, a
stocky uniform glanced at the shield on her belt and nodded her in. She asked, ‘How is he?’

‘Dunno. It’s a mess.’

Her phone buzzed. She glanced at caller ID. Pam. Sachs debated but let it ring. She didn’t have anything to tell her yet.

I will in a few minutes, she thought. Then wondered what exactly the message would be.

A mess …

Pam lived on the ground floor, a small dark space of about
six hundred square feet, whose resemblance to a jail cell was enhanced by the exposed brick walls and tiny windows. Such was the price of living in a posh neighborhood like the Heights, the center of town when Brooklyn was a city unto itself.

She stepped inside and saw two officers.

‘Detective Sachs,’ one said, though she didn’t recognize him. ‘You running the scene? We’ve cleared it. Had to
make sure—’

‘Where is he?’ She looked past the uniform but then she realized that, of course, the Underground Man would have taken Seth to the basement.

The officer confirmed that he was in the cellar. ‘The medics, coupla detectives from the Eight Four.’ He shook his head. ‘They’re doing the best they can. But.’

Sachs tossed her hair off her shoulder. Wished she’d banded it up outside. No time
then, no time now. She turned and headed back into the corridor, which smelled of onion and mold and some powerful cleaner. It turned her stomach. She found herself walking slowly. The sight of death or gore didn’t bother her; you don’t sign on to crime scene work if that troubles you. But the looming thought of a somber call to Pam was a sea anchor.

Or given that the perp’s weapon of choice
was toxins, even a non-fatal injury could be devastating: blindness, nerve or brain damage, kidney failure.

She found the door to the cellar and started down the rickety stairs. Overhead bulbs lit the way, bare and glaring. The basement was well underground, with slits of greasy windows at ceiling level. The large expanse, which smelled astringently of furnace fuel and mildew, was mostly open
but there were several smaller areas with doorless entryways, maybe storerooms at one time. It was into one of these that the perp had dragged Seth. She could see the backs of one detective and one uniform in the room, both looking down.

Her heart thudded as she also noted a medical tech standing with crossed arms outside the doorway, peering in. His face, a mask.

He looked at her blankly and
nodded, then glanced back into the storeroom.

Alarmed, Sachs stepped forward, peered in and stopped.

Seth McGuinn, shirtless, lay on the damp floor, hands under him – probably cuffed like the other victims. His eyes were closed and his face was as gray as the ancient paint on the troubled cellar walls.

‘Amelia. They don’t know,’ said one of the uniformed officers, standing near Seth. His name was Flaherty and she knew the big, redheaded officer from the Eight Four.

Two other medics were working on Seth, clearing an airway, checking vitals. She could see on the portable monitor that, at least, his heart was beating, if weakly.

‘Did the perp tattoo him?’ She couldn’t see his abdomen
from here.

Flaherty said, ‘No.’

Sachs said to the medics, ‘Might be propofol. That’s what he’s been using. To knock them out.’

‘A sedative’s consistent with this condition. He’s not convulsing and there are no gastrointestinal reactions and his vitals are stable so I’d guess it’s not a toxin.’

Sachs moved to the side and noted a red spot on Seth’s neck – where 11-5 had used the hypodermic.
‘There. See the injection site?’

‘Right.’

‘He’s done that in all the prior cases. Is he—’

A moan. Shivering suddenly, Seth opened his eyes. Blinked in confusion. Then alarm flooded his face; he would be first wondering, then recalling, how he’d ended up here.

‘I … What’s going—’

‘It’s okay, sir,’ one of the medics said.

‘You’re all right; you’re safe,’ Flaherty said.

‘Amelia!’ Urgent, though
groggy.

‘How’re you feeling?’

‘Did he poison me?’

‘Doesn’t look like it.’

One of the medics asked a series of questions about possible symptoms. They jotted the young man’s responses. The EMT said, ‘All right, sir. We’ll have the lab run your blood but it’s looking like he just got some sedative into you. We’ll get you into the ER and run a few more tests, but I think you’re good.’

Sachs:
‘Can I ask him a few questions?’

‘Sure.’

Sachs donned gloves, helped him sit up and removed the handcuffs. Wincing, Seth lowered his arms and rubbed his wrists. ‘Man, that hurts.’

‘Can you walk?’ The scene down here was already badly contaminated, but she wanted to preserve as much as she could. ‘I’d like to get you upstairs into the hallway.’

‘I guess. Maybe with some help.’

She eased him
up. With her arm around his waist, he staggered through the basement and up the stairs. In the front hallway they sat on the stairs leading to the second story.

The front door opened once more and Sachs greeted the Crime Scene team from Queens. The detective running the detail was an attractive young officer named Cheyenne Edwards, one of the stars of the department. Her specialty was chemical
analysis. If a perp had a molecule of controlled substance or gunshot residue on his body, Edwards could find it. She also had a rep, as in reputation, as in gold.

As in don’t fuck with her.

Once, she and her partner had been confronted by a perp who’d returned to a scene to collect the loot he’d left behind. The killer, surprised by the cops, had turned his weapon first on the older, broad-shouldered
CS officer, assuming the pretty young woman would be less of a threat – only to find out the hard way that this wasn’t quite the case. Edwards had reached into her pocket, where her Taurus .38 backup rested, and fired through the cloth, parking three slugs in his chest. (‘Looks like, we just solved the case,’ she’d noted but continued to search the scene expertly, because that was just
what you did.)

‘Chey, you run the scene, okay?’ Sachs asked.

‘You got it.’

Then to Seth: ‘So, tell me what happened.’

The man told Sachs about the initial assault, which they’d heard part of on the phone. A man in mask and gloves had broken the patio door and lunged as Seth stood in the living room. They’d fought but, gripping Seth around the chest with one arm, the perp had jabbed a needle
into his neck. He passed out and came to in the basement. The man was getting a portable tattoo gun from a backpack.

Sachs displayed a picture of an American Eagle tattoo machine.

‘Yeah, that looks like what he had. He was pissed off I’d come to and gave me another shot. But then he suddenly stopped. He kind of cocked his head. I saw he had an earbud in. It was like somebody warned him.’

Sachs
grimaced. ‘There’s no evidence he’s working with anybody. It was probably a police scanner.’

Costing all of $59.99. And if you act now, you get a list of frequencies of your favorite police department.

‘He just shoved his stuff into his backpack and ran. I passed out again.’

She asked for a description and learned what she expected: ‘White male around thirty, I’d guess. What I could see of
his hair it was dark, round face. Light eyes. Blue or gray. Kind of weird, that color. But I really couldn’t see much. He had this yellowish see-through mask on.’ His voice was soft. ‘Scared the hell out of me. And this tattoo. On his … yeah, his left arm. Red. A snake with legs.’

‘A centipede?’

‘Could be. A human face. Way creepy.’ He closed his eyes for a minute, actually shivered.

Sachs
showed him the Identi-Kit picture that the near-victim Harriet Stanton had done at the hospital. Seth looked at it but just shook his head. ‘Could be – the face was round like that. The eyes’re the same. But I just can’t be sure. I’m trying to think about what he was wearing. I really can’t remember. Something dark, I think. But it could’ve been orange tie-dye, for all I know. Seeing that mask and
the tattoo, I was really freaked out.’