Текст книги "The Skin Collector"

Автор книги: Jeffery Deaver

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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

CHAPTER 27

Provence2 was crowded.

As soon as the Times  had bestowed its stars, this hole in the wall in Hell’s Kitchen had been inundated with folks desperate to cram into the loud, frantic rooms and to sample dishes that were a fusion of two southern cuisines, American and French.

Fried chicken with capers and ratatouille.

Les escargots avec grits.

Improbable. But the dish works …

Straddled by a warehouse to the south and a chic steel and glass office building to the north, the restaurant was housed in a structure typical of those on the west side of Midtown: a century old, angled floors that snapped and creaked underfoot, and ceilings of hammered tin. Low archways led from one cramped dining room to the next and the walls were sandblasted brick, which did nothing to dim the din.

Lighting was low, courtesy of yellow bulbs in what seemed to be lamp fixtures as old as the structure itself (though they’d come not from a Victorian era ironworks on the Hudson but a factory outside Seoul).

At one of the tables in the back, the conversation ricocheted like an air hockey puck.

‘He doesn’t have a chance. It’s ridiculous.’

‘Did you hear about his girlfriend?’

‘She’s not his girlfriend.’

‘She is  his girlfriend, it was on Facebook.’

‘Anyway I don’t even think she’s a girl.’

‘Ooo. That’s sweet.’

‘When the press finds out, he’s toast. Let’s get another bottle. The Chablis.’

Samantha Levine listened to her companions’ banter but not with her full attention. For one thing, she wasn’t much concerned about local politics. The candidate they were speaking of probably wouldn’t win the next election but not because of girlfriends who might or might not pass the physical but because he was bland and petty. You needed the quality of more  to be mayor of the city of New York.

You needed that je ne sais quoi , y’all.

Apart from that, though, Samantha’s thoughts kept returning to her job. Major trouble lately. She’d worked late – close to eight p.m., a half hour ago – then hurried here from her office in the glitzy building next door to join her friends. She tried a memory dump of the concerns she’d lugged with her but in the high tech world you couldn’t really escape from the puzzle and problems you faced every day. Sure, there were advantages: You could wear – as she did now – jeans and sweaters (tank tops in the summer), you made six figures, you could be inked or studded, you could work flex hours, you could bring a pillow couch to your office and use that for your desk.

Only you had to produce.

And be one step ahead of the competition.

And, fuck, there was a lot of competition out there.

The capital I Internet. What a place. So much money, so many chances for breathtaking success. And for bottomless fuck ups.

The thirty two year old, with a voluptuous figure, ornery brown and purple hair and big doey Japanese anime dark eyes, sipped more white wine and tried to focus past a particularly difficult meeting with her boss not long ago, a meeting that had floated in her thoughts ever since.

Put. It. Away.

Finally, she managed to. Spearing and eating a wedge of fried green tomato topped with ground anchovies, she turned her attention back to her friends. Smiling, all of them (except Text Girl), as Raoul – her roommate, yes, just a roommate – was telling a story about her. He was an assistant to a fashion photog who shot for Vogue  wannabe mags, all online. The slim, bearded boss had come to pick up Raoul in the apartment they shared in Chelsea and he’d looked over Samantha’s T shirt and PJ bottoms, sprouting hair tamed with mismatched rubber bands and very, very serious glasses. ‘Hmmmm. Can I shoot you?’

‘Oh, you’re the one got the contract for the Geek Girl calendar?’ Samantha had offered. Raoul now gave his delivery a little extra oomph and the table roared.

This was a good group. Raoul and James – his best bud – and Louise from Samantha’s office and Some Other Woman, who’d arrived on James’s arm. Was her name Katrina or Katharine or Karina? Jamie’s blonde of the week. Samantha had dubbed her Text Girl.

The men continued their discussion of politics, as if they had money on the outcome of the election, Louise was now trying to discuss something serious with Samantha and the K woman texted some more.

‘Be back,’ Samantha said.

She rose and started along the antique floor, which was – after the three glasses of anti stress wine – not as even as it had been when she’d arrived. Easy, girl. You can drink fall in the Hamptons, you can drink fall in Cape May. You don’t drink fall in Manhattan.

Two flirts from the tiny bar. She ignored them, though she ignored one less stridently than the other. It was the fellow sitting by himself at the end. He was a slim guy, pale – only goes out at night kind of skin. Painter or sculptor or some other artist, she guessed. Handsome, though there might be a weak chin factor if he looked down. Piercing eyes. They offered one of those  glances. Samantha called them ‘laps’, as in a dog lapping up food.

She got a chill. Because the look went on a little too long and then got scary.

He was undressing her, looking over her body.

She regretted tapping his eyes with hers. And continued quickly to the most challenging route the restaurant offered: the narrow stairway down to the restrooms in the basement.

Clunk, clunk …

She made it.

Dark and quiet down here, clean, which had surprised her the first time she’d come to the place. The people who’d renovated had spent plenty of time making the dining rooms rough edged rustic (yeah, we get it: French and American countryside ), but the bathrooms were pure SoHo. Slate, recessed lighting, ornamental grasses for decoration. Mapplethorpe on the walls but nothing too weird. No whips, no butts.

Samantha walked to the W , tried the door.

Locked. She grimaced. Provence2 wasn’t big but no fucking restaurant in the world should have a single occupancy women’s room. Were the owners crazy?

Creaks overhead, from footsteps on the sprung wood flooring. Muted voices.

Thinking of the man at the bar.

What was  I doing, looking back at him like that? Jesus. Be a little smarter. Okay? Why flirt? You’ve got Elliott from work. He isn’t a dream boy but he’s decent and dependable and watches PBS. Next time he asks, say yes. He has those sweet eyes and he’s probably even pretty decent in bed.

Come on, I’ve gotta pee. One damn restroom?

Then, with a different pitch of creak, footsteps were coming down the stairs.

Clunk, clunk …

Samantha’s heart thudded. She knew it was the flirter, the dangerous one.

She saw boots appearing on the steps. Men’s ankle boots. Out of the ’70s. Weird.

Her head swiveled. She was at the far end of the corridor. Nowhere to go from here. No exits. What do I do if he rushes me? The decibel level in the restaurant itself was piercing; nobody would hear. I left my cell phone upstairs, I –

Then: Relax. You’re not alone. There was the bimb in the restroom. She’d hear a scream.

Besides, nobody, however horny, would risk a rape in a restaurant corridor.

More likely it would be just an Awkward Incident. The slim guy coming on too strong, pushing the flirt, growing angry, but ultimately backing off. How many dozens of times had that happened? The worst injury would be branding her a cocktease.

Which was what happened when women glanced at a guy. Different rules. When men did the glancing, oh, it was all right. With men, oh, that’s what they do.

Would things ever change?

But then: What if he was a real psycho? With a knife? A slasher. The man’s piercing eyes had suggested maybe he was. And there was that murder just the other day – some girl in SoHo killed in the basement.

Just like here. Hell, I’ll hold it–

Then Samantha barked a laugh.

The boot wearer appeared. A fat old guy in a suit and string tie. A tourist from Dallas or Houston. He glanced at her once, nodded a vague greeting and walked into the men’s room.

Then she was turning back to the door of the W .

Come on, honey. Jesus. You got your slutty makeup on just right? Or are you puking up your fourth Cosmo? Samantha gripped the knob again to remind the inconsiderate occupant that there was a queue.

The handle turned.

Hell, she thought. It’d been unlocked all along. She’d probably turned it the wrong way a moment ago.

How stupid can you be? She pushed inside and swept the light on, letting the door swing shut.

And saw the man standing behind it. He wore coveralls and a stocking cap. In a flash he locked the door.

Oh, Jesusjesusjesus …

His face was burned! No, distorted, mushed under a latex hood, transparent but yellow. And rubber gloves, the same color, on his hands. On his left arm, a sliver of a red tattoo was visible between the end of the glove and the start of the sleeve. An insect, with pincers, spiny legs, but human eyes.

‘Ahhhh, no, no, no …’

She spun about fast, grabbing at the door, but he got to her first, arm around her chest. And she felt a sharp pain as he punched her neck.

Kicking, starting to scream, but he clapped a thick cloth over her mouth. The sounds were absorbed.

And then she noticed a small door across from the toilet, two by three feet or so, open onto a blackness – a tunnel or passage to an even deeper basement, below the restaurant.

‘Please!’ she muttered but the word was swallowed by the gag.

Growing limp, growing tired. Hardly afraid anymore. And she realized: the neck punch. He’d injected her with something. Before sleep took her completely Samantha felt herself being eased to the floor then dragged across it, closer and closer to the black doorway.

She sensed warmth, felt the trickle down her leg – fear and the lack of control as whatever drug he’d stuck her with took effect.

‘No,’ she whispered.

And heard a voice in her ear. ‘Yes.’ The word was drawn out for a very long time, as if it weren’t the assailant who was speaking but the insect on his arm, hissing, hissing, hissing.

CHAPTER 28

The Rule of Skin …

As he labored away on his new victim’s very nice belly with the American Eagle, Billy reflected on his fascination with the substance, God’s own canvas.

Skin.

It was Billy’s canvas too and he’d become as fixated on it as the Bone Collector had been on the skeletal system of the body – which Billy had found interesting reading in Serial Cities . He appreciated the Bone Collector’s obsession but frankly he couldn’t understand his fascination with bones. Skin was far and away the more revealing aspect of the human body. Far more central. More important.

What insights did bones give? Nothing. Not like skin.

Of the integumentary organs, which protect the body, skin is the most evolved, far more than hooves, nails, scales, feathers, and the clever, creepy arthropod exoskeletons. In mammals, skin is the largest organ. Even if organs and vessels might be maintained by some alternative Dr Seuss contraption, skin does so much more. It prevents infection and is an early warning system against and protection from excessive cold and heat, from disease or invasion, from ticks to teeth to clubs and, under certain circumstances, even spears and bullets. Skin retains that vitally precious substance, water. It absorbs the light we need and even manufactures vitamin D. How about that?

Skin.

Delicate or tough as, yes, leather. (Around the eyes it’s only a half millimeter thick; on the soles of the feet, five millimeters.)

The epidermis is the top layer, the beige or black or brown sheath we can see, and the dermis, into which a tattoo machine’s needles must penetrate, is below. Skin is a master at regeneration, which means that the most beautiful tattoo in the world will vanish if the needles don’t go deep enough, which would be like painting the Mona Lisa on sand.

But these basic facts about skin, as interesting as they were to Billy Haven, didn’t touch on its true value. Skin reveals, skin explains. Wrinkles report age and childbearing, calluses hint at vocation and hobby, color suggests health. And then there’s pigmentation. A whole other story.

Now Billy Haven sat back and surveyed his work on the parchment of his victim’s skin. Yes, good.

A Billy Mod …

The watch on his right wrist hummed. Five seconds later the second watch, in his pocket, did so too. Sort of a snooze alarm, prescribed by the Modification Commandments.

And not a bad idea. Like most artists, Billy tended to get caught up in his work.

He rose and, with illumination provided by the halogen headlamp strapped to his forehead, walked around the dim space underneath Provence2.

This area was an octagonal chamber, about thirty feet across. Three arches led to three darkened tunnels. In a different century, Billy had learned in research, these corridors had been used to direct cattle to two different underground abattoirs here on the West Side of Manhattan.

Healthy cows were directed to one doorway, sickly to another. Both were slaughtered for meat but the tainted ones were sold locally to the poor in Hell’s Kitchen or shipped down to Five Points or the city of Brooklyn, for the filthy markets there. The more robust cattle ended up in the kitchens of the Upper East  and Westsiders and the better restaurants in town.

Billy didn’t know which of the exits was for the healthy beef, which for the sickly. He’d been down both until they ended, one in brick, one in rubble, but he couldn’t deduce which was which. He wished he knew because he wanted to tattoo the young lady in the tainted beef corridor – it just seemed appropriate. But he’d decided to do his mod in the place where the livestock cull had been made: the octagon itself.

He looked her over carefully. The tattoo was good. The cicatrized border too. He was pleased. When he did a work for clients in his shop back home, Billy never worried about their reaction. He had his own standards. A job they seemed indifferent to might fill him with ecstasy. Or a girl could tearfully look over her wedding cake tattoo (yes, pretty popular) and cry at how beautiful it was but he’d see one flaw, a tiny stroke out of place, and Billy would be furious with himself for days.

This art was good, though. He was satisfied.

He wondered if they’d catch on to the message now. But, no, not even Lincoln Rhyme was that good.

Thinking about the difficulty he’d had earlier – at the hospital and the doctors’ office building – he’d decided it was time to start slowing down those pursuing him.

One of the passages in the Commandments, written in Billy’s flowing script, was this: ‘Continually reassess the strengths of the officers investigating you. It may be necessary to throw up roadblocks to their investigation. Aim for the lower level officers only; too senior, and the authorities will bring more effort to bear on finding you.’

Or, in Billy’s terms: Thou shalt smite all those who are trying to mess with the Modification.

His idea for slowing them down was simple. People who’ve never been inked think that machines use a hollow needle. But that’s not the case. Tattoo needles are solid, usually several soldered together, allowing the ink to run down the shaft and into the skin.

But Billy had some hypodermics, to sedate his victims. He now reached into his gear bag and withdrew a plastic medicine bottle with a locking cap. He opened the lid carefully and set the brown cylinder on the ground. He selected a surgeon’s hemostat, long tweezers, from his stash of stolen medical equipment. With this instrument he reached into the plastic bottle and picked up the three quarter inch tip of a thirty gauge hypodermic – one of the smallest diameters. He’d carefully fatigued this tip off the syringe and packed it with poison.

He now picked up the woman’s purse and worked the dull end of the needle into the leather under the clasp so that when the crime scene cop opened the bag, the business end of the nearly microscopic needle would pierce the glove and the skin. The tip was so thin, it was unlikely that the person pricked would feel a thing.

Until, of course, about an hour later, when the symptoms hit them like a fireball. And those symptoms were delicious: Strychnine produces some of the most extreme and painful reactions of any toxin. You can count on nausea, convulsion of muscles, hypertension, grotesque flexing of the body, raw sensitivity and finally asphyxiation.

Strychnine, in effect, spasms you to death.

Though in this case, the dosage would, in an adult, lead to severe brain damage rather than death.

Visit pestilence upon your pursuers.

A moan from behind him.

She was swimming to consciousness.

Billy turned toward her, the beam of the halogen whipsawing around the room, fast, leveraged by the motion of his head.

He carefully set the purse on the ground in a spot that looked as if he’d tossed it aside casually – they’d think it contained all sorts of good trace evidence and fingerprints. He hoped it would be Amelia Sachs who picked it up. He was angry at her for finding him at the hospital, even if Lincoln Rhyme was the one responsible. He’d hoped someday to go back to the specimens room but, thanks to her, he never could.

Of course, even if she didn’t get jabbed, maybe one of Lincoln Rhyme’s assistants would.

And Rhyme himself? He supposed it was possible; he’d learned that the man had regained some use of his arm and hand. Maybe he’d don a glove and pick up the purse. He definitely  wouldn’t feel the sting.

‘Oh …’

He turned to look at the art gallery of beautiful skin stretched out before him. Ivory. He taped a flashlight in place over his canvas, flicked it on. Looked at her eyes, squinting first in confusion, then in pain.

His wristwatch hummed.

Then the other.

And it was time to leave.

CHAPTER 29

Lights flashed off the falling sleet, off the encrusted piles of old snow, off the wet asphalt.

Blue glows, white, red. Pulsing. Urgent.

Amelia Sachs was climbing out of her maroon Torino, parked beside several ambulances, though several ambulances weren’t necessary. None were. The only required medical vehicle was the city morgue van. The first responders to this scene reported that Samantha Levine, the unsub’s second victim, was deceased, declared dead at the scene.

Poison again, of course. That was the preliminary, from the first responders, but there was no doubt this was Unsub 11 5’s work.

When she hadn’t returned to the table of the chic restaurant Provence2, her friends had become concerned. A search of the restroom revealed an access door, which was slightly askew. A waiter had pulled it open, stuck his head in, gasped and vomited.

Sachs stood on the street, looking over the restaurant and the assembling vehicles. Lon Sellitto walked up. ‘Amelia.’

She shook her head. ‘We stopped him at the hospital this morning and he got somebody else. Right away. Telling us basically: “Fuck you.”’

Diners were settling checks and leaving and the staff were looking about as thrilled as you could imagine, upon learning that a patron had been abducted in the restroom and dragged into a tunnel beneath their establishment and murdered.

It was only a matter of time, Sachs guessed, before Provence2 would be shuttered. It was as if the restaurant itself were a second victim. She supposed the boutique on Elizabeth Street too would be out of business soon.

‘I’ll start canvassing,’ the big detective muttered and ambled off, digging a notebook from his pocket.

The crime scene bus arrived and nosed up to the curb. Sachs waved to the CS techs who were climbing out. Jean Eagleston was the lead, the woman who’d worked the Chloe Moore scene in SoHo – only yesterday though it seemed like last month. She had a new partner, a slim Latino who had calm but probing eyes – hinting that he was perfect for crime scene work. Sachs walked up to them. ‘Same procedure. I’ll go in first, process the body, walk the grid. You can handle the restroom where he snatched her, any exit routes.’

Eagleston said, ‘Will do, Amelia.’ She nodded and Sachs went to the back of the CS vehicle to suit up in the Tyvek, booties, hood and gloves. The N95 respirator too. Remembering that, whatever happened, she should leave it in place.

Rust …

Goggles this time.

As she was stepping into the legs of the coveralls, she happened to glance up the street. On the corner, the same side of the street as the restaurant, was a man in a dark jacket that was similar to what the unsub had worn at the hospital for the attempted assault on Harriet Stanton – though he was in a baseball cap, not a stocking. He was on a phone and paying only moderate attention to the scene. Still, there was something artificial about his pose.

Could it be the unsub, back again, as he’d done in SoHo?

She looked away quickly and continued to gown herself, trying to act casual.

It wasn’t common for a perp to return to the scene of the crime – that was a cliché helpful only in bad murder mysteries and made for TV movies – but it did happen sometimes. Particularly perps who weren’t professional criminals but psychopaths, whose motives for murder were rooted in mental or emotional disturbance, which pretty much described Unsub 11 5.

On the pretext of getting a new pair of gloves from the far side of the bus, Sachs eased up to a detective she knew, a sharp, streetwise officer who’d recently been assigned to Midtown North. Nancy Simpson was handling crowd control detail and directing diners out of the immediate scene as they exited the restaurant.

‘Hey,’ she said, ‘Nancy.’

‘This guy again?’ the woman muttered. She was in an NYPD windbreaker, collar pulled high against the weather. Sachs liked the stylish beret, in dark green.

‘Looks like it.’

‘Got people scared all over town,’ Simpson told her. ‘Reports of intruders in basements’re up a hundred percent. None of ’em pan out, but we send Patrol anyway. Tying up everything.’ She added with a wink. ‘And nobody’s washing their clothes. Afraid of the laundry room.’

‘We may have a situation, Nancy.’

‘Go ahead.’

‘Don’t look behind you.’

‘I won’t. Why?’

‘We’ve got a fish I’m interested in. A guy on the corner. This block. He’s in a jacket, baseball cap. I want you to get close but don’t see him. You know what I mean?’

‘Sure. I saw somebody. Peripheral. Wondered.’

‘Get close. And then stop him. Keep your weapon ready. There’s an off chance it might be the perp.’

‘Who did this ?’

‘Who did this. Not likely, I’m saying. But maybe.’

‘How should I get close?’

‘You’re checking traffic, you’re on your phone, pretending you’re on your phone, I mean.’

‘Arrest?’

‘Just ID at this point. I’ll come up behind. I’ll have my weapon drawn.’

‘Fish. I’m bait.’

Sachs glanced to the side. ‘Oh, hell. He’s gone.’

The unsub, or whoever he was, had disappeared around the corner of a glass and chrome building, about ten stories high, next to the restaurant where Samantha Levine had been dining – before the fateful trip to the restroom.

‘I’m on it,’ Simpson said. She sprinted in the direction the man had gone.

Sachs ran to the command post and told Bo Haumann there was a possible suspect. Instantly he marshaled a half dozen ESU and other officers. She glanced toward Simpson. From the way she paused and looked around, Sachs deduced the suspect had vanished.

The detective turned and trotted back to Sachs and Haumann.

‘Sorry, Amelia. He’s gone. Maybe ducked into that building – the fancy one on the corner – or took off in a car.’

Haumann said, ‘We’ll follow up. We have a picture of your unsub from the homicide yesterday, the Identi Kit image.’

She pictured the surly, Slavic looking face, the weirdly light eyes.

The ESU leader said to the men he’d called around him, ‘Deploy. Go find him. And somebody call it in to Midtown South. I want a team moving west down Fifty two Street. We’ll hem him in, if we can.’

‘Yessir.’

They trotted off.

As much as she wanted to go with them – she considered handing off the crime scene – Sachs finished dressing for the grid.

When she was gowned, bootied and hooded, she grabbed the collection kit and, with a glance back at the street down which the fish had swum away, Sachs started for the door of the restaurant.