The Skin Collector (36 page)

That was it, Sachs reported. No fingerprints, no footprints, no other trace.

Nor had any leads been discovered at or near the Belvedere apartment building. No one had seen a man impersonating a fireman, handing out poisoned coffee. A team sent
to check the trash cans in the area had found no other containers of tainted beverage. Security videos were not helpful.

Lon Sellitto was still in critical condition and unconscious – and therefore unable to give them any more information about the unsub, though Rhyme doubted that he’d have been so careless as to reveal anything about himself, as he’d handed out the tainted coffee.

Mel Cooper
checked with the research team that Lon Sellitto had put together and learned they had not been able to find anything having to do with the numeric message. They did receive something, though. A memorandum had come in from other Major Cases officers Sellitto had ‘tasked’, his verb, with researching the centipede tattoo.

From: Unsub 11-5 Task Force

To: Det. Lon Sellitto, Capt. Lincoln Rhyme

Re: Centipede

We have not had much luck in finding connections between specific perpetrators in the past and the unsub in this case, regarding centipede tattoos. We have learned this:

Centipedes are arthropods in the class Chilopoda of the subphylum Myriapoda. They have one pair of legs per body segment but don’t necessarily have one hundred legs. They can have as few as two dozen, as many as
three hundred. The largest are about a foot long.

Only centipedes have ‘forcipules,’ which are modified front legs, just behind the head. These legs grab prey and through needle-like openings deliver venom that paralyzes or kills. They have venom glands on the first pair of legs, forming a pincer-like appendage always found just behind the head. Forcipules are not true mouthparts, although they
are used in the capture of prey items, injecting venom and holding on to captured prey. Venom glands run through a tube almost to the tip of each forcipule.

Culturally, centipedes are depicted for two purposes: One, to intimidate enemies. The image of a walking snake, armed with venom-delivering fangs, taps into root fears of humans. We came across this quotation from a Tibetan Buddhist: ‘If
you enjoy frightening others, you will be reincarnated as a centipede.’

Two, centipedes represent invasion of apparently safe places. Centipedes will make their homes in shoes, beds, couches, cradles, dresser drawers. The theory is that the insect represents the idea that what we think is safe really isn’t.

Note that some people have tattoos based on The Human Centipede, a particularly bad gross-out
film in which three people are sewn together to form what the title suggests. These tattoos have nothing to do with the centipede insect.

‘Reads like a bad term paper,’ Rhyme muttered. ‘Mumbo-jumbo but print it out, tape it up.’

The door buzzer sounded and he was amused to notice everyone else in the room start. Cooper and Sachs dropped their hands near their weapons – the aftershock of the
attempted attack earlier today. Though he doubted their unsub would return, much less announce his arrival with the bell.

Thom checked the door and let Ron Pulaski into the town house.

He walked in, noticed everyone’s troubled faces and asked, ‘What’s up?’

He was told about the attempted attack.

‘Poison you, Lincoln? Oh, man.’

‘It’s okay, rookie. Still here to torment you. How did the undercover
job go?’

‘I think I did okay.’

‘Tell us.’

He explained how the trip to the funeral home had gone, meeting the lawyer, the man’s reluctance to say much or reveal his clients.

A lawyer. Interesting.

Pulaski continued, ‘I think I won him over. I called you a son of a bitch, Lincoln.’

‘That work for you?’

‘Yeah, felt good.’

Rhyme barked a laugh.

‘Then I did what you told me. I suggested –
didn’t say anything exactly – but I suggested that I’d worked with Logan. And that I’d been in touch recently.’

‘Did you get a card?’

‘No. And Weller didn’t offer. He was keeping his cards close to his chest.’

‘And you didn’t want to overplay your hand.’

Pulaski said, ‘I like that, what you just said. You slapped down my cliché with one of your own.’

The kid was really coming into his own.
‘Anything you could deduce?’

‘I tried to see if he was from California but he wouldn’t say. But he was tanned. Looked healthy, balding, stocky. Southern accent. Name was Dave Weller. I’ll check him out.’

‘Well, good. We’ll see if he makes a move. If not, I’ll talk to Nance Laurel in the DA’s Office about getting a subpoena to scoop up the funeral home records. But that’s a last resort; I want
to keep you in play for as long as we can. Okay. Not a bad job, rookie. We wait. Now: to the task at hand. Unsub 11-5. He’s still got his message to complete. “the second”. “forty”. “seventeenth”. He’s not through yet. I want to know where he’s going to hit next. We have to move on it.’

He wheeled closer to the chart. The answers are there someplace, he thought. Answers to where he would strike
next, who he was, what his purpose in orchestrating these terrible attacks might be.

But those were answers as shadowed as the sleet-laden skies of New York.

• Victim: Braden Alexander
  

  –
  Not killed
  

• Unsub 11-5
  

  –
  See details from prior scenes
  

  –
  Six feet
  

  –
  Yellow latex mask
  

  –
  Yellow gloves
  

  –
  Possibly man in Identi-Kit image
  

  –
  Possibly coveralls
  

  –
  Probably from Midwest, West Virginia, mountains – other rural setting
  

  –
  Had scalpel
  

• Sedated with propofol
  

  –
  How obtained? Access to medical supplies? (No local thefts)
  

• Potential Kill Zone
  

  –
  Underneath garage
  

  –
  Similar infrastructure to other scenes
  

     
  IFON
  

     
  ConEd
  

     
  Metro-North rail Emergency Communication Link
  

• Handcuffs
  

  –
  Generic, cannot
  be sourced
  

• Tattoo
  

  –
  Implants
  

  –
  ‘17th’
  

  –
  Loaded with concentrated nicotine
  

     
  Nightshade family
  

     
  Too many locations to source
  

• Trace from plastic bag
  

  –
  Human albumin and sodium chloride (plastic surgery in his plans?)
  

  –
  ‘No. 3’ written on bag in red water-soluble ink generally used for water treatment but not in prior locations or here, so could be a poison
  for future attack (however too many sources to find)
  

• Victim: Seth McGuinn
  

  –
  Not killed, minor injuries
  

• Unsub
  

  –
  Red centipede tattoo
  

  –
  Confirmed had American Eagle tattoo machine
  

  –
  Fit general description from earlier attacks
  

  –
  Coveralls
  

• Sedated with propofol
  

  –
  How obtained? Access to medical supplies? (No local thefts)
  

• American
  Medical 31-gauge single-use hypodermic syringe.
  

  –
  Used primarily for plastic surgery
  

• Toxic extract from white baneberry plant (doll’s eyes)
  

  –
  Cardiogenic
  

• No friction ridges
  
• No footprints (wore booties)
  
• Handcuffs
  

  –
  Generic, cannot be sourced
  

• Trace:
  

  –
  Fibers from blueprint/engineering diagram
  

  –
  Cicutoxin trace, probably from earlier scene
  

• Unsub
  

  –
  No friction ridges
  

  –
  No footprints
  (booties)
  

  –
  Talented lock picker (used pick gun?)
  

• Hair
  

  –
  Beard stubble, but probably from prior scene
  

• Toxin
  

  –
  Tremetol from snakeroot
  

Leaving the poisoned whisky for Rhyme had been as exhilarating as Billy Haven had expected. More, actually.

Part of this was the need to derail the criminalist’s investigation. But part too was the thrill of the game. Sneaking inside, right under the man’s nose, while he and his associates were in the front hall, watching the excitement in the park.

Dark-skinned male …

Making his
way through the East Village, Billy was reflecting that the Commandments took into account nearly everything about the Modification. But some contingencies it didn’t cover. Like poisoning the forensic expert who anticipated everything.

He was now on a similar mission.

Thou shalt be prepared to improvise.

The residents in this part of the city seemed frazzled, unclean, distracted, tense. After
the abortive trip to the hospital in Marble Hill, escaping, he’d felt a certain contempt for those on the streets of the Bronx, but at least he’d observed plenty of families, shopping together, going into diners together, heading to or from school events. Here, everyone seemed on their own. People in their twenties mostly, wearing threadbare winter coats and ugly boots, protecting them from the
gray-yellow slush. A few couples but even they seemed drawn together by either rootless infatuation or desperation. No one appeared really in love.