The Skin Collector (6 page)

‘—the hell is going on?’

‘Sorry, Rhyme,’ Sachs said. ‘Had to concentrate.’

He was silent for a moment. Then he seemed to get it – her wrestling with the breadbasket. ‘All right. Well. The scene secure, as far as you can tell?’

‘The immediate scene.’ The tunnel was bricked
off to the east but she glanced again at the darkness to the west.

‘Turn one of the spotlights that way. It’ll blind anybody trying to target you. And you’ll be able to see him coming before he sees you.’

The first responders had brought two halogen lamps on tripods, connected to large batteries. She turned one in the direction Rhyme had suggested and squinted as she examined the receding tunnel.

No indication of threats.

Sachs hoped there’d be no firefight. The big pipe overhead, newly installed, it seemed – the one stamped
DEP
– appeared to be thick iron; her rounds in the Glock, hollow-points, wouldn’t break through the metal. But if the unsub returned with guns a-blazing he might be loaded with armor-piercing slugs, which could pierce the pipe. Because of the huge water pressure inside,
she imagined, a rupture might create an explosion like a massive load of C-4.

And even if he had regular bullets, the ricochet off metal and the stone and brick walls could kill or wound as easily as a direct shot.

She peered up the tunnel again and saw no movement.

‘Clear, Rhyme.’

‘Good. So. Let’s get going.’ He’d turned impatient.

Sachs already was. Wanted to get out of here.

‘Start with
the vic.’

She’s more than a victim, Rhyme, Sachs thought. She has a name. Chloe Moore. She was a twenty-six-year-old sale clerk in a boutique that sold clothing with loose strands escaping the stitching. She was working for near minimum wage because she was intoxicated on New York. On acting. On being twenty-six. And God bless her for it.

And she didn’t deserve to die. Much less like this.

Sachs slipped rubber bands on her booties, the balls of the feet, to differentiate her footfalls from those of the perp and the first responders – whose footgear she would photograph later as control samples.

She walked closer to the body. Chloe lay on her back, her blouse tugged up to below the breasts. Sachs noted that even in death her round, pretty face was distorted with an asymmetrical grimace,
muscles taut. It was evidence of the obvious pain she’d experienced, pain tapering to death. She’d frothed at the mouth. And vomited copiously. The smell was vile. Sachs mentally moved past it.

Chloe’s hands, under her body, were secured in cheap handcuffs. With a universal key Sachs removed these. The victim’s ankles were duct-taped. With surgical scissors Sachs clipped the tape and bagged the
gray, dusty strips. She scraped beneath the young woman’s deep-purple fingernails, noting fibers and bits of off-white flecks. Perhaps she’d fought him and if so bits of valuable trace, even skin, might be present; if her killer was in the CODIS DNA database, they might have his identity in hours.

Rhyme said, ‘I want to see the tattoo, Sachs.’

Sachs noted a small blue tattoo on Chloe’s neck,
right and near the shoulder, but that had been done long ago. Besides, it was easy to see which one the killer had done. She knelt down and trained her eyes, and the camera, on Chloe’s abdomen.

‘There it is, Rhyme.’

The criminalist whispered, ‘His message. Well,
part
of his message. What do you think it means?’

But given the sparse letters, Sachs realized, his question had to be rhetorical.

The two words were about six inches long and ran horizontally one inch above the woman’s navel.

Although he’d presumably used poison, not ink, the inflamed wound, swollen and scarring, was easy enough to read.

‘All right,’ Rhyme
said, ‘“the second.” And the border, the scalloped lines. Wonder what those are about?’

Sachs commented, ‘They’re not as swollen as the letters. Maybe there was no poison in them. They look like wounds, not tattoos. And, Rhyme, look at the characters.’

‘How well done they are?’

‘Exactly. Calligraphy. He’s good. He knows what he’s doing.’

‘And another observation. It must’ve taken some time
to do. He could’ve written them crudely. Or just injected her with the poison. Or shot her for that matter. What’s his game?’

Sachs had a thought. ‘And if it took awhile, that meant she was in pain for a long time.’

‘Well, yes, you can see the pain reaction but I have a feeling that was later. She couldn’t have been conscious while he was writing his message. Even if she wasn’t trying to get
away, the involuntary movement would’ve ruined his handiwork. No, he subdued her somehow. Any trauma to the head?’

She examined the woman’s scalp carefully and looked under her blouse, front and back. ‘No. And I don’t see any signs of Taser barbs. No stun gun welts … Ah but, Rhyme, see that?’ She pointed out a tiny red dot on her neck.

‘Injection site?’

‘I think so. I’m guessing sedative, not
poison. There’s no sign of any swelling or other irritation that toxin would cause.’

‘The blood work will tell us.’

Sachs took pictures of the wound and then bent down and swabbed the area carefully, lifting trace. Then the rest of her body too and the ground around her. It was likely that a perp this diligent would have worn gloves – it certainly appeared that way. Yet valuable evidence from
even a gloved-and-gowned perp could still easily be transferred to the victim or crime scene.

Edmond Locard, the French criminalist who lived a century before, formulated the Exchange Principle: that every time a crime occurs there is a transfer of evidence between criminal and scene, or criminal and victim. That evidence (which he referred to as ‘dust’) might be very, very difficult to detect
and collect but it exists, for the diligent and innovative forensic scientist.

‘There’s something odd, Rhyme.’

‘Odd?’ A splinter of disdain for the artless word. ‘Go ahead, Sachs.’

‘I’m using only one of the first responders’ spotlights – the other’s pointed up the tunnel. But there’re two shadows on the ground.’ She looked up and walked in a slow circle to get a clear view. ‘Ah, there’s another
light near the ceiling, between those two pipes. It looks like a flashlight.’

‘Not left by the first responders?’

‘What cop or medic is going to give up his Maglite?’

The big black tubed flashlights that all cops and firemen carried around were invaluable – great sources of illumination and they doubled as bone-breaking weapons in a clutch.

But she noted it wasn’t one of those expensive models.
This was cheap, plastic.

‘It’s taped to the pipe. Duct tape. Why would he leave a light here, Rhyme?’

‘That explains it.’

‘What?’ she asked.

‘How the store manager found the body. The flashlight. Our perp wanted to make sure we found the message from our sponsor.’

The words seemed a little flippant to Sachs but she’d always suspected that much of Rhyme’s gruff façade and sardonic delivery
were defense mechanisms. Still, she wondered if he raised the barricade of protection higher than he needed to.

She preferred to leave her heart unguarded.

‘I’ll collect it last,’ Sachs told him. ‘Every bit of light helps.’

She then walked the grid, which was Rhyme’s phrase for searching a crime scene. The grid pattern was the most comprehensive approach in looking for evidence and assessing
what had occurred. This technique involved walking slowly across the scene, then pivoting and moving one step to the right or left and returning to the far side. You did this over and over until you’d covered the entire space. Then you turned 90 degrees and covered the same ground again, perpendicular. Like mowing a lawn twice.

And with each step you paused to look up and down and side-to-side.

You smelled the scene too, though in this case Sachs couldn’t detect more than Chloe’s vomit. No methane or feces, which surprised her, considering that one of the pipes here was connected to the city’s sewage system.

The search didn’t reveal much. Whatever implements the perp had brought with him he’d taken – aside from the flashlight, cuffs and strips of duct tape. She did make one find, a
small ball of crumpled paper, slightly yellowed.

‘What’s that, Sachs? I can’t see very clearly.’

She explained.

‘Leave it as is; we’ll open it back here. Might have trace inside. Wonder if it’s from her.’

Her
.
The Vic.

Chloe Moore.

‘Or maybe from the perp, Rhyme,’ Sachs added. ‘I found what looked like fibers of newsprint or paper under her nails.’

‘Ah, that could be good. Did they fight?
Did she grab something of his? Or did
he
want something she had and rip it from her fingers – while she struggled to hold on to it? Questions, questions, questions.’

Using additional adhesive rollers and a small handheld vacuum, Sachs continued the search. Once these samples had been bagged and tagged she used a separate vacuum and a new roller to collect trace from places as far away as possible
from where Chloe lay and where the unsub had walked. These were control samples – natural trace from this area. If analysis back at the lab revealed, for example, a clay-rich earth near one of the unsub’s footprints, which didn’t match any control specimens, they could conclude that he possibly lived or worked in or had some other connection to a locale loaded with clay. A small step toward finding
the perp … but a step nonetheless.

‘I can’t see many shoe or boot marks, Sachs.’

She was looking down at where he’d stood or walked. ‘I can make a few out but they’re not going to be much help. He wore booties.’

‘Brother,’ the criminalist muttered.

‘I’ll roll the footfalls for trace but there’s no point in electrostaticking.’

She was referring to using sheets of plastic to lift shoe prints,
in much the same way that fingerprints were lifted. The resulting tread pattern not only could suggest shoe size but might show up in the massive footwear database that Rhyme had created at the NYPD years ago, which was still maintained.

‘And I’d say he had his own adhesive roller with him. It looks like he swept up as much as he could.’

‘I hate smart perps.’

No, he didn’t, Sachs reflected.
He hated stupid perps. Smart bad guys were challenging and a lot more fun. Sachs was smiling beneath her N95 respirator. ‘I’m going silent, Rhyme. Checking the entrance and exit routes. The manhole.’

She withdrew her Maglite, flicked on the powerful beam and continued down the tunnel toward the ladder leading up to the manhole, noting not a bit of pain from the persistent arthritis that had plagued
her for decades; recent surgery had worked its magic. Her shadow, cast by the halogen spot behind, stretched out before her, a distorted silhouette of a puppet. The ground beneath the manhole was damp. This strongly suggested it was how he’d gotten into and out of the tunnel. She noted this fact then continued on, into the darker reaches beyond.

With every step she grew more uneasy. Not because
of claustrophobia this time – the tunnel was unpleasant but spacious compared with the entrance shaft. No, her discomfort was because she’d seen the perp’s handiwork – the tattoo, the cutting, the poison. The combination of his cleverness, his calculation and his perverse choice of weaponry all conspired to suggest that he’d be more than happy to hang around and try to stop his pursuers.

The
flashlight in her left hand, while her right hovered near the Glock, Sachs continued down the increasingly dark tunnel, listening for footsteps, an attacker’s breaths, the click and snap of weapons chambering rounds or going off safety or cocking.

None of those, though she did hear a hum from one or more of the conduits or the yellow IFON boxes, whatever they were. A faint rush from the water
pipe.

Then a scrape, a flash of movement.

Glock out, left hand gripping the Maglite, forearm supporting her shooting hand. The muzzle followed the beam. Sweeping, scanning.

Where?

Sweat again, a thud of heartbeat.

But very different from claustrophobia’s chest-thudding panic. This wasn’t sour fear. This was anticipation. This was hunt. And Amelia Sachs lived for the sensation.

She was ready,
finger off the guard, onto the trigger but feather-light; it takes little more than a breath to fire a Glock.

Scanning, scanning …

Where? Where?

Snap …

She crouched.

And the rat stepped blithely out from behind a pillar, looked her way with faint concern and turned, scuttling away.

Thank you, Sachs thought, following in the creature’s general direction – toward the distant end of the tunnel.
If the rodent was walking so nonchalantly over the ground it was unlikely that an ambush awaited. She continued walking. In sixty or so yards she came to the bricked-up wall. There were no footprints here – normal or bootied – so their perp hadn’t wandered this way. She returned to the ladder.

She lifted out her cell phone – encased in uncontaminating plastic – and called up the GPS map. She
noted that she was underneath Elizabeth Street, to the east, near a curb.