Текст книги "The Skin Collector"

Автор книги: Jeffery Deaver

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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

CHAPTER 16

Near midnight, Billy Haven cleared away his supper dishes, washing everything that wasn’t disposable in bleach to remove DNA.

Which was as dangerous – to him – as some of the poisons he’d extracted and refined.

He sat back down at the rickety table in the kitchen area of his workshop, off Canal Street, and opened the dog eared, battered notebook, the Commandments.

Delivered, in a way, by the hand of God.

Those stone tablets to Moses.

The notebook, with its dozen or so pages of tightly packed sentences – in Billy’s beautiful, flowing cursive writing – described in detail how the Modification should unfold, who should die, when to do what, the risks to avoid, the risks to take, what advantages to seize, how to cope with unexpected reversals. An exact timetable. If Genesis were a how to guide like the Modification Commandments, the first book of the Bible would read:

Day Three, 11:20 a.m.: Create deciduous trees. Okay, now You have seven minutes to create evergreens …

Day Six, 6:42 a.m.: Time for salmon and trout. Get a move on!

Day Six, noon: Let’s do the Adam and Eve thing.

Which naturally brought to mind Lovely Girl. He pictured her for a moment, face, hair, pure white skin, then eased away the distracting image the way you’d set aside a precious snapshot of a departed loved one – carefully, out of a superstitious fear of harming your love if you dropped the frame.

Flipping through the pages, he studied what was coming next. Pausing once again to reflect that the Modification was certainly complicated. At various points in the process he’d wondered if it was too much so. But he thought back to the pages of the chapter he’d stolen from the library earlier that day, Serial Cities , recalling all the surprising – no, shocking – information it had revealed.

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.

He believed that was the quotation; he wasn’t sure, since Chloe Moore, no longer of this earth, had inconsiderately ripped a portion of that passage from the book.

Anticipate …

So, yes, the plan for the Modification had  to be this precise. The people he was up against were too good for him to be careless, to miss a cue in any way.

He reviewed plans for the next attack, tomorrow. He memorized locations, he memorized timing. Everything seemed in order. In his mind he rehearsed the attack; he’d already been to the site. He now pictured it, he smelled it.

Good. He was ready.

Then he glanced at his right wrist, the watch. He was tired.

And what, he wondered, was going on with the investigation into the demise of Ms Chloe?

He turned on the radio, hoping for news.

The earlier reports had been that a young resident of Queens, a woman clerk in a stylish boutique in SoHo, had been found dead in an access tunnel off the cellar. Well, Billy had thought, perplexed, it was hardly very stylish. Chinese crap, overpriced and meant for frothy hair sluts from Jersey and mothers seared by the approach of middle age.

Initially Chloe’s name had not been released, pending notification of next of kin.

Hearing that, Billy had reflected: How sadistic can one cop be? To release the news that a young woman from Queens has been killed and not divulge the name? How many parents of kids living in that area had started making desperate phone calls?

Now, waiting for an update, all he got were commercials. Didn’t anyone care about poor Chloe Moore?

Chloe Moore, Chloe the whore …

He paced back and forth in front of his terrariums. White leaves, green leaves, red leaves, blue …

Then, as often happened when he looked over the plants who were his companions, he thought of Oleander.

And the Oleander Room.

Billy resented that that thought intruded but there was nothing to do about it. He could–

Ah, now the news. Finally.

A city council scandal, a minor train derailment, an economic report. Then, at last, a follow up on Chloe Moore’s demise. Additional details were coughed up now, a bit of history. The facts suggested the attack was not sexual in nature. (Of course not; Billy was offended that the subject had even come up. The media. Despicable.) A rough description. So someone had spotted him near the manhole.

He listened as the story wound down.

Still nothing about tattooing. Nothing about poison.

That was typical, Billy knew. He’d read about police procedures in verifying confessions. The cops ask people taking credit for a crime certain unique details and, if they can’t answer, the supposed perpetrators are dismissed as crackpots (a surprising number of people confessed to crimes they hadn’t committed).

Nor had the story mentioned anything about the phrase ‘the second’.

But that  would be a thorn in their sides, of course.

What on earth could the message be that their mysterious perp was sending?

The Modification Commandments required, however, that it would be impossible for the police to decipher his message from the first several victims.

He shut the radio off.

Billy yawned. Sleep soon. He checked email, sent some texts, received some, then two hums of the watches told him it was time to get some rest.

When he was through in the bathroom, where he cleaned the basin and toothbrush with bleach – banishing the DNA once more – he returned to his bed, flopping down in it. He tugged his Bible from under the pillow and propped it on his chest.

Billy had had a crisis of faith a few years ago. A serious one. He believed in Jesus and the power of Christ. But he also believed he was meant to put his talents to use as a tattoo artist.

The problem was this: The book of Leviticus warned, You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor tattoo any marks upon you: I am the LORD.

He’d been depressed for weeks upon learning this. He wrestled with how to reconcile the conflict.

One argument was that the Bible was full of such dissonance: In the same chapter, for instance, it was written: ‘Nor shall a garment of mixed linen and wool come upon you.’ Yet God surely had other priorities than sending to hell people wearing blended cloth suits.

Billy had wondered if He intended future generations to reinterpret the Bible, to bring it into line with contemporary society. But that seemed suspect; it was like those Supreme Court justices who said that the Constitution was a living thing and should change to suit the times.

Dangerous, thinking like that.

Finally the answer to this apparent contradiction appeared. Billy had reasoned: The Bible also says, Thou shalt not kill . But the Good Book was filled with instances of outright murder – including a fair amount of carnage by the Almighty Himself. So, it was okay to kill in certain instances. Such as to further the glory of God, eliminate infidels and threats, further the values of truth and justice. Dozens of reasons.

So in Leviticus, it was clear, God had to mean that tattooing too was acceptable under certain circumstances , just like taking lives.

And what better circumstances could there be than the mission Billy was on at the moment?

The Modification.

He opened his Bible. He settled on a verse in Exodus, a well read page.

And if men strive together, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart, and yet no harm follow; he shall be surely fined, according as the woman’s husband shall lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. But if any harm follow, then thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

II
THE UNDERGROUND MAN

CHAPTER 17

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 6

NOON

The morning had been a flurry of activity, trying to correlate the evidence Sachs had come up with to pinpoint a place where the unsub might be living or had decided to make his stalking ground.

Rhyme wheeled back and forth in front of the chart, feeling in his neck and jaw the thump as the Merits chair rolled over one of the power cables bisecting the floor of his parlor.

237 Elizabeth Street

Victim: Chloe Moore, 26

– Probably no connection to Unsub

– No sexual assault, but touching of skin

Unsub 11 5

– White male

– Slim to medium build

– Stocking cap

– Thigh length dark coat

– Dark backpack

– Wore booties

– No friction ridges

– Professional tattoo artist or has been

– May be using a ‘splitter’ for the tattoos

– Uses bloodline to outline the tattoos

– Not from area; more rural probably

– Using book to learn techniques and outthink Rhyme and police?

– Obsessed with skin

– Will possibly be targeting the police

– Organized offender; will be planning attacks ahead of time

– Probably returned to the scene

COD: Poisoning with cicutoxin, introduced into system by tattooing

– From water hemlock plant

– No known source

– Concentrated, eight times normal

Sedated with propofol

– How obtained? Access to medical supplies?

Tattooed with ‘the second’ Old English typeface, surrounded by scallops

– Part of message?

– Task force at police HQ checking this out

– Scallops are cicatrization – scarring – and probably significant

Portable tattoo machine used as weapon

– Probably American Eagle

Cotton fiber

– Off white

– Probably from Unsub’s shirt, torn in struggle

Page from book

– Probably torn from Unsub’s pocket in struggle

– Probably mass produced hardcover 1996–2000

– Book is Serial Cities . He was interested in Chapter 7, about Bone Collector.

– Psychological connection with Bone Collector? Revenge?

– Using book to learn techniques and outthink Rhyme and police?

– Obsessed with skin

– Will possibly be targeting the police

Possibly used adhesive rollers to remove trace from clothing prior to attack.

Handcuffs

– Generic, cannot be sourced

Flashlight

– Generic, cannot be sourced

Duct tape

– Generic, cannot be sourced

Trace evidence

Nitric oxide, ozone, iron manganese, nickel, silver beryllium, chlorinated hydrocarbon, acetylene

– Possibly oxy fuel welding supplies

Tetrodotoxin

– Fugu fish poison

– Zombie drug

– Minute amounts

– Not used on victim here

Stercobilin, urea 9.3 g/L, chloride 1.87 g/L, sodium 1.17 g/L, potassium 0.750 g/L, creatinine 0.670 g/L

– fecal material

– Possibly suggesting interest/obsession in underground

– From future kill sites underground?

Benzalkonium chloride

– Quaternary ammonium (quat), institutional sanitizer

Adhesive latex

– Used in bandages and construction, other uses too.

Inwood marble

– Dust and fine grains

Tovex explosive

– Probably from blast site

Rhyme turned from the chart to Amelia Sachs, whom he caught staring out the window into the sleety morning. She was still obviously troubled by the news she’d received yesterday – that Pam was going on a ’round the world tour with her boyfriend, then moving in with him when they returned.

Seth was a nice young man, she’d explained as they’d lain in his sumptuous bed last night, lights out, the wind battering the windows. ‘To date. Not hole up in a hostel in Morocco or Goa. Maybe he’s Mr Perfect, maybe he’s not. Who can tell?’

‘Think it’ll blow over?’

‘No. She’s determined.’

‘Like you. Remember your mother didn’t like you going out with a gimp in a wheelchair?’

‘You could’ve been a marathon runner and she wouldn’t’ve liked you. Nobody could meet my mother’s standards. She likes you now, though.’

‘My point exactly.’

‘I like Seth. I’ll like him better in a year.’

Rhyme had smiled.

She had asked, ‘Any thoughts?’

‘Afraid not.’ Rhyme had been married for a few years. He’d gotten divorced not long after his accident (his call; not his wife’s), but the marriage had been doomed for some time. He was sure he’d been in love at some point but the relationship had soured for reasons he could never isolate, quantify and analyze. As for what he had with Sachs? It worked because it worked. That was the best he could say. Lincoln Rhyme was admittedly in no position to offer romantic advice.

But then who, ultimately, was? Love is an occurrence for which there are no expert witnesses.

Sachs had added, ‘And I didn’t handle it well. I got protective. Too motherly. It turned ugly. I should’ve been objective, rational. But, no, I let things get out of control.’

Now, this morning, Rhyme could see that Sachs was still deeply troubled. He was thinking he should say something reassuring, when, to his relief, the professional deflected the personal.

‘Have something here,’ Pulaski called from across the lab, where he’d been staring at a monitor. ‘I think …’ He fell silent, glowering. ‘Damn Internet. Just when I had some hits.’

Rhyme could see that his screen was frozen.

‘Okay, okay, up again.’

He was tapping more keys. Maps and schematics and what appeared to be lists of compounds and elemental materials popped up on the big screen.

‘You’re getting to be quite the scientist, rookie,’ Rhyme said, regarding the notes.

‘What do you have, Ron?’ Mel Cooper asked.

‘Some good news for a change. Maybe.’

CHAPTER 18

Harriet Stanton’s family trip to New York, which she’d been looking forward to for years, had not turned out as planned.

It had been derailed by a chance incident that could have changed her life forever.

Harriet now stood before the mirror of the hotel suite she’d spent a restless night in and looked over her suit. Dark. Not black but navy blue.

How close she’d come to selecting the former color. Bad luck, making that choice.

She plucked a few pieces of random lint off the wool, brushed at some dust – the hotel was not as nice as advertised online (but it was affordable and frugality was important in the Stanton family, which hailed from a town where accommodation standards were set by a Holiday Inn).

Fifty three years old, with slim shoulders and a pear shaped build (but a slim pear), Harriet had a staunch face that was ruddy and weathered – from gardening, from marshaling children after class in the backyard, from picnics and barbecues. Yet she was the least vain woman on earth, and the only creases that troubled her were not in her face but in the skirt of the suit – one set of wrinkles that she could control.

Given her destination, a grim place, she might easily have ignored the imperfection. But that wasn’t Harriet’s way. There was a right approach and a wrong, a lazy, a misguided approach. She unzipped and sloughed off the skirt, which slid easily over the beige slip.

She deftly ratcheted open the cheap ironing board with one hand (oh, Harriet knew her laundry implements) and plugged in the inadequate iron, which was secured to the board with a wire; were handheld appliance thefts such a terrible problem in New York? And didn’t the hotel have the guests’ credit cards anyway?

Oh, well. It was a different world here, so different from home.

As she waited for the heat to gather she kept replaying her husband’s words from yesterday as they’d walked through the chill streets of New York.

‘Hey, Harriet, hey.’ He’d stopped on the street, halfway between FAO Schwarz and Madison Avenue, hand on a lamppost.

‘Honey?’ she’d asked, circling.

‘Sorry. I’m sorry.’ The man, ten years older than his wife, had seemed embarrassed. ‘I’m not feeling so good. Something.’ He’d touched his chest. ‘Something here, you know.’

Cab or call? she’d wondered, debating furiously.

Nine one one, of course. Don’t fool around.

In twenty minutes they were at a nearby hospital emergency room.

And the diagnosis: a mild myocardial infarction.

‘A what?’ she’d asked.

Oh, it seemed: heart attack.

This was curious. Outfitted with low cholesterol, the man had never smoked cigarettes in his life, only occasional cigars, and his six foot two frame was as narrow and strong as the pole he’d gripped to steady himself when the heart attack had struck. He trekked through the woods after deer and boar every weekend during hunting season when he could find the time. He helped friends frame rec rooms and garages. Every weekend he muscled onto his shoulder forty pounders of mulch and potting soil and carried them from pickup truck to shed.

‘Unfair,’ Matthew had muttered, upon hearing the diagnosis. ‘Our dream trip to the city, and look what happens. Damn unfair.’

As a precaution, the doctors had transferred him to a hospital about a half hour north of their hotel, which was apparently the best cardiac facility in the city. His prognosis was excellent and he’d be released tomorrow. No surgery was called for. There would be some medication to lower his blood pressure and he’d carry around nitroglycerine tablets. And he should take an aspirin a day. But the doctors seemed to treat the attack as minor.

To test the iron she flicked a dot of spit onto the Teflon plate. It sizzled and leapt off. She spritzed a bit of water onto the skirt from the Dannon bottle and ironed the wrinkles into oblivion.

Slipping the skirt back on, she reexamined herself in the mirror. Good. But she decided she needed some color and tied a red and white silk scarf around her neck. Perfect. Bright but not flamboyant. She collected her handbag and left the room, descending to the lobby in an elevator car outside which a chain jangled at every passing floor.

Once outside, Harriet oriented herself and flagged down a cab. She told the driver the name of the hospital and climbed into the back seat. The air inside was funky and she believed the driver, some foreigner, hadn’t bathed recently. A cliché but true.

Despite the sleet, she rolled down the window, prepared to argue if he objected. But he didn’t. He seemed oblivious to her – well, to everything. He punched the button on the meter and sped off.

As they clattered north in the old taxi, Harriet was thinking about the facilities at the hospital. The staff seemed nice and the doctors professional, even if their English was awkward. The one thing she didn’t like, though, was that Matthew’s room in Upper Manhattan Medical Center was in the basement at the end of a long, dim corridor.

Shabby and creepy. And when she’d visited last night it had been deserted.

Looking at the elegant town houses to the left and Central Park to the right, Harriet tried to cast off any concerns about visiting the unpleasant place. She was thinking that maybe the bad luck of the heart attack was an omen, hinting at worse to come.

But then she put those feelings down to superstition, pulled out her phone and sent a cheerful text that she was on her way.

CHAPTER 19

With his backpack over his shoulder – the pack containing the American Eagle machine and some particularly virulent poison – Billy Haven turned down a side street, past a large construction area, avoiding pedestrians.

That is, avoiding witnesses.

He stepped into the doctors’ office building annex, next to the Upper Manhattan Medical Center complex. In the lobby he kept his head down and walked purposefully toward a stairwell. He’d scoped the place out and knew exactly where he was going and how to get there invisibly.

No one paid any attention to the slim young man, like so many slim young men in New York, an artist, a musician, a wishful actor.

Just like them.

Though their backpacks didn’t contain what his did.

Billy pushed through the fire door and started down the stairs. He descended to the basement level and followed the signs to the hospital proper, through a long, dim corridor. It was deserted, as if not many workers knew about it. More likely, they were aware of the dingy route but preferred to walk from office building to hospital on the surface, where you could not only find a Starbucks or buy a slice of Ray’s original pizza but not get dragged into a closet and raped.

The tunnel leading to the hospital was long – several hundred feet – and painted a gray that you associated with warships. Pipes ran overhead. It was dark because the hospital, perhaps in a move to save money, had placed a bulb in every third socket. There were no security cameras.

Billy knew time was critical but he, of course, had to make one stop. He’d noted the detour yesterday, when he’d checked to see if this would be a suitably private route into the hospital.

The sign on the door had intrigued him.

He’d simply had  to go inside.

And he did so now, aware of the time pressure. But feeling like a kid playing hooky to hang out in a toy store.

The large room, labeled by the sign Specimens , was dim but lit well enough by the emergency exit lights, which cast an eerie rosy glow on the contents: a thousand jars filled with body parts floating in a jaundiced liquid, presumably formaldehyde.

Eyes, hands, livers, hearts, lungs, sexual organs, breasts, feet. Whole fetuses too. Billy noted that most of the samples dated to the early twentieth century. Maybe back then medical students used the real thing to learn anatomy, while today’s generation went for high def computer images.

Against the wall were shelves of bones, hundreds of them. He thought back to the infamous case Lincoln Rhyme had worked years ago, the Bone Collector crimes. Yet bones held little interest for Billy Haven.

The Rule of Bone?

No, didn’t resonate like the Rule of Skin. No comparison.

He now walked up and down the aisles, examining the jars, which ranged from a few inches to three feet in height. He paused and stared, eye to eye with a severed head. The features seemed of South Pacific heritage to Billy, or so he wanted to believe – because, to his delight, the head sported a tattoo: a cross just below where the hairline would have been.

Billy took this as a good sign. The word ‘tattoo’ comes from the Polynesian or Samoan tatau , the process of inking the lower male torso with an elaborate geometric design, called a pe’a  (and a woman’s with a similar inking, called a malu ). The process takes weeks and is extremely painful. Those who finish the inking get a special title and are respected for their courage. Those who don’t even try are called ‘naked’ in Samoan and marginalized. The worst stigma, though, was awarded to the men and women who started the procedure but didn’t finish it because they couldn’t stand the pain. The shame remained with them forever.

Billy liked the fact that they defined themselves according to their relationship to inking.

He decided to believe that the man he was staring at had endured getting his pe’a  and had gone on to be a force in his tribe. Heathen though he might have been, he was brave, a good warrior (even if not clever enough to avoid having his head end up on a steel shelf in the New World).

Billy held the jar in one hand and leaned forward until he was only a few inches from the severed head, separated by thick glass and thin liquid.

He thought about one of his favorite books. The Island of Doctor Moreau . The H. G. Wells novel was about an Englishman shipwrecked on an island, on which the doctor of the title surgically combined humans and animals. Hyena men, Leopard men … Billy had read and reread the book the way other kids would read Harry Potter  or Twilight .

Vivisection and recombination were the ultimate modding, of course. And Doctor Moreau  was the perfect  example of the application of the Rule of Skin.

All right. Time to get back to reality, he chided himself.

Billy now stepped to the door and looked up and down the corridor. Still deserted. He continued his way to the hospital and knew when he’d crossed into the building. The neutral scent of cleanser and mold from the office building was overrun by a mélange of smells. Sweet disinfectants, alcohol, Lysol, Betadine.

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!’