The Skin Collector

CHAPTER 32

Sweating, groaning loudly, Billy Haven awoke from a difficult dream.

Involving the Oleander Room.

Though all dreams set there — and there were lots of them — were, by definition, difficult.

This one was particularly horrifying because his parents were present, even though they’d died some years before he’d ever stepped into the Oleander Room for the first time. Maybe they were ghosts but they looked real. The odd reality of the unreality of dreams.

His mother was gazing at what he was doing and she was screaming, ‘No, no, no! Stop, stop!’

But Billy was smiling reassuringly and saying, ‘It’s okay,’ even though he knew it wasn’t. It was anything but okay. Then he realized the reassurance didn’t mean anything because his mother couldn’t hear him. Which wiped the smile away and he felt miserable.

His father merely shook his head, disappointed at what he was seeing. Vastly disappointed. This upset Billy too.

But their part in the dream made sense, now that he thought about it: His parents had died and died bloody.

Perfectly, horrifically logical.

Billy was smelling blood, seeing blood, tasting blood. Inking his skin temporarily with blood. Which happened both in the dream and in real life in the Oleander Room. Painting his skin the way people in some cultures do when piercing is forbidden.

Billy flung off the sheet and sat up, swinging his feet to the cold floor. Using a pillow, he wiped his forehead of sweat, picturing all of them: Lovely Girl and his parents.

He glanced down at the works on his thighs. On the left:

On the other:

Two names that he was proud to carry with him. That he’d carry forever. They represented a huge gap in his life. But a gap soon to be closed. A wrong soon to be righted.

The Modification …

He looked at the rest of his body.

Billy Haven was largely tat-free, which was odd for someone who made much of his income as a tattoo artist. Most inkers were drawn to the profession because they enjoyed body mods, were even obsessed with the needles, the lure of the machine. More. Give me more. And they’d often grow depressed at the dwindling inches of uninked skin on their bodies to fill with more works.

But not Billy. Maybe it was like Michelangelo. The master had liked painting but did not particularly like being painted.

Finger skin to finger skin …

The truth was that Billy hadn’t wanted to be a tat artist at all. It had been a temporary job to put himself through college. But he’d found that he enjoyed the practice and in an area where a pen-and-paintbrush artist would have trouble making a living, a skin artist could do okay for himself. So he’d tucked aside his somewhat worthless college degree, set up shop in a strip mall and proceeded to make pretty good ducats with his Billy Mods.

He looked again at his thighs.

Then he glanced at his left arm. The red centipede.

The creature was about eighteen inches long. Its posterior was at the middle of his biceps and the design moved in a lazy S pattern to the back of his hand, where the insect’s head rested — the head with a human face, full lips, knowing eyes, a nose, a mouth encircling the fangs.

Traditionally, people tattooed themselves with animals for two reasons: to assume attributes of the creature, like courage from a lion or stealth from a panther. Or to serve as an emblem to immunize them from the dangers of a particular predator.

Billy didn’t know much about psychology but knew that, between the two, it was the first reason that had made him pick this creature with which to decorate his arm.

All he really knew, though, was that it gave him comfort.

He dressed and assembled his gear, then ran a pet roller over his clothing, hair and body several times.

His wristwatch hummed. Then the other, in his pocket, made a similar noise a few seconds later.

It was time to go hunting once more.

Okay. This is a pain.

Billy was in a quiet, dim tunnel beneath the East Side of Midtown, making his way toward where he was going to ink a new victim to hell.

But his route had been blocked off.

In the nineteenth century, he’d learned, this tunnel housed a connector for a narrow-gauge spur line linking a factory with a rail depot around 44th Street. It was a glorious construction of smooth brick and elegant arches, surprisingly free of vermin and mold. The ties and rails were gone but the passageway’s transportation heritage was still evident: Several blocks away, Billy could hear, trains moved north and south out of Grand Central Station. You could hear subways too. Overhead and under. Some so close that dust fell.

The tunnel would have led him very close to his next victim — if not for some inconsiderate laborers who’d bricked off the doorway in the past twenty-four hours, some construction work Billy hadn’t planned on.

A pain …

He surveyed the murky passageway, illuminated by light filtering in from runoff gratings and ill-matched manhole covers. From cracks in some of the nearby buildings too. How to get around the wall, without having to climb to the surface? The Underground Man should stay, well, underground.

Walking another fifty yards, Billy noted a ladder of U-shaped iron bars set into the brick wall. The rungs led, ten feet up, to a smaller passage that looked like it would bypass the obstruction. He shucked the backpack and walked to the ladder. He climbed up and peered inside. Yes, it seemed to lead to another, larger tunnel that would take him where he wanted to go.

He returned to the floor to collect his backpack and continue his journey.

Which was when the man came out of nowhere.

The shadowy form charged him, enwrapped Billy in a bear’s grip and pressed him against the tunnel wall.

Lord, Billy prayed. Save me, Lord …

His hands shook, heart pounded at the shock.

The man looked him up and down. He was about Billy’s size and age but very strong. Surprisingly strong. He stank, that complex aroma of unwashed human skin and hair and street oils. Jeans, two Housing Works shirts, white and pale blue. A tattered plaid sport coat, originally nice quality, stolen or plucked out of a Dumpster in this fancy neighborhood. The man sported wild hair but was clean shaven, curiously. His dark eyes were beady and narrow and feral. Billy thought immediately of Doctor Moreau.

Bear-man …

‘My block. Here, it’s my block. You’re in my block. Why are you in my block?’ His predator’s eyes dancing around.

Billy tried to pull away but stopped fast when Bear-man flicked open a straight razor expertly and touched the gleaming edge to Billy’s throat.

CHAPTER 33

‘Careful there. Please.’ Billy was whispering these words. Maybe others too. He wasn’t sure.

‘My block,’ Bear-man was repeating, apparently not the least inclined to be careful. The razor scraped, scraped on the one-day growth of beard on his throat. It sounded like a car transmission to Billy.

‘You,’ the man growled.

Thinking of his parents again, his aunt and uncle, other relatives.

Lovely Girl, of course.

He was going to die, and like this? Wasteful, tragic.

The massive vice grip tightened. ‘Are you the one? I’ll bet you are. Who else would you be, of course? Of course.’

What was the response supposed to be to that?

Not to move, for one thing. Billy sensed that if he did, he’d feel a tickling pain beneath his jaw and, after the stroke, giddiness, as blood sprayed and sprayed. And then he’d feel nothing at all.

Billy said, ‘Look, I’m with the city. I work for the city.’ He nodded at his coveralls. ‘I’m not here to hassle you. I’m just doing my job.’

‘You’re not a reporter?’

‘With the city,’ he repeated, tapping the coveralls — very carefully and with a cautious finger. Then he gambled. ‘I hate reporters.’

This seemed to be reassuring to Bear-man, though he didn’t relax much. The razor was still held firmly in one massive, filthy paw. The other continued to press Billy painfully into the wall of the tunnel.

‘Julian?’ Bear-man asked.

‘What?’

‘Julian?’

As if the name was a code and Billy was supposed to respond with the counter password. If he got it wrong he’d be decapitated. His palms sweated. He rolled the dice. ‘No, I’m not Julian.’

‘No, no, no. Do you know Julian Savitch?’ Irritated that Billy wasn’t catching on.

‘No.’

Bear-man said skeptically, ‘No, no? He wrote that book.’

‘Well, I don’t know him. Really.’

A close examination of Billy’s face. ‘It was about me. Not just me. All of us. I have a copy. I got a copy that was signed. Somebody from the city—’ He poked the logo on the coveralls. ‘Somebody from the city brought him down here. Brought him into our block. Here. My block. Did you do that?’

‘I didn’t … No, I don’t even know—’

‘The law says I can cut you if I feel I’m in danger and the jury believes I really felt I was in danger. Not that I was actually in danger. But if I felt I was in danger. See the difference? That’s all I need. And you’re dead, buddy.’

The sentences ran into each other, clattering, like cars on a fast-braking freight train.

Billy asked calmly, ‘What’s your name?’

‘Nathan.’

‘Please, Nathan.’ Then he shut up as the razor scraped his throat once more.

Rasp, rasp …

‘You live down here?’ he asked Bear-man.

‘Julian said bad things about us. He called us that name.’

‘Name?’

‘That we don’t like! Are you the one who sent him down here? Somebody from the city did. When I find him I’m going to kill him. He called us that name.’

‘What name?’ Billy was thinking this was a logical question to ask and he wouldn’t incur the wrath of Bear-man by at least raising the issue, an apparently sensitive one.

The answer, spat out, was ‘“Mole People”. In his book. About us who live down here. Thousands of us. We’re homeless most of us. We live in the tunnels and subways. He called us Mole People. We don’t like that.’

‘Who would?’ Billy asked. ‘No, I didn’t lead anybody down here. And I don’t know a Julian.’

The razor gleamed, even in the dim light, lovingly kept. It was Bear-man’s treasure, and Billy understood the clean shave, not very common among the homeless, he guessed.

‘We don’t like that, being called that, moles,’ Bear-man repeated, as if he’d forgotten he’d just said it. ‘I’m a person like you and me.’

Well, that sentence hardly worked. But Billy nodded in agreement, thinking he was close to vomiting. ‘Sure you are. Well, I don’t know Julian, Nathan. I’m just here checking on the tunnels. For safety, you know.’

Bear-man stared. ‘Sure you say that but why should I believe you why why why?’ Words running together in a growl.

‘You don’t have to believe me. But it’s true.’

Billy thought he was actually about to die. He thought of the people he’d loved.

He said a prayer.

Bear- not Mole-man gripped Billy harder. The razor stayed in place. ‘You know, some of us don’t choose to live here. We don’t want to live here. Don’t you think that? We’d rather have a home in Westchester. Some of us would rather fuck a wife every Thursday night and take her to see the in-laws on nice spring days. But things don’t always work out as planned now, do they?’

‘No, they don’t, Nathan. They sure don’t.’ And Billy, desperate to forge some connection between them, came seconds away from telling Bear-man about the tragedies of his parents and Lovely Girl. But, no. You didn’t need a Modification Commandment to remind you not to do stupid things. ‘I’m not helping authors write about you. I’m here to make sure the tunnels don’t collapse and there are no water or gas leaks.’ He pointed up to an array of pipes running along the tunnel’s ceiling.

‘What’s that?’ Nathan was tugging up Billy’s sleeve. He was staring at the centipede with a child-like fascination.

‘A tattoo.’

‘Well, now. That’s pretty nice. Pretty good.’ The razor drooped. But didn’t fold away. God, Nathan’s hand was huge.

‘It’s my hobby.’

‘You did that? You did that on yourself?’

‘I did, yeah. It’s not that hard. You like it?’

Nathan admitted, ‘I guess I do.’

‘I could give you a tattoo, Nathan. If I do that would you move that razor away from my throat?’

‘What kind of tattoo?’

‘Anything you like.’

‘I’m not going up top.’ He said this as if Billy had suggested strolling through a nuclear reactor core that was melting down.

‘No, I can do it here. I can give you a tattoo here. Would you like one?’

‘I guess I might.’

A nod at the backpack. ‘I’ve got my machine with me.’ He repeated, ‘It’s a hobby. I’ll give you a tattoo. And how ’bout some money? I’ve got some clothes too. I’ll give you all that if you move that razor and let me go.’

My Lord, he’s strong. How could he be that strong, living down here? Nathan could kill him with his hands; he hardly needed the shining blade.

Eyebrows flexing closer.

Nathan was kneading the razor, then gripping it harder, Billy thought. The blade moved as twitchy and train-clattery as Bear-man’s sentences.

‘Nathan?’ Billy asked.

The man didn’t answer.

‘Nathan. I didn’t know this was your block. I just was doing my work, checking the pipes and valves and things. I want people to be safe down here.’

The razor hovered.

And Bear-man’s breathing seemed harder now as he stared at the centipede. The red ink. The face, the fangs, the segments of the body.

The indecipherable eyes.

‘Nathan?’ Billy whispered. ‘A tattoo. You want that tattoo?’

Because what utility worker doesn’t cart around an American Eagle tattoo machine to ink people on a whim?

‘I’ll give you my best tattoo. Would you like that? It’ll be a present. And the clothes and money I told you about? A hundred dollars.’

‘It won’t hurt?’

‘It’ll sting a little. But not bad. I’m going to get my backpack now. That’s where the money and clothes are, and my tattoo machine. Is it all right if I reach into my backpack?’

‘I guess you can,’ Nathan whispered.

Billy slid the backpack closer and extracted the parts to his machine. ‘You can sit down there. Is that all right?’ The razor was still not far away and was still open. God or Satan or the ghost of Abraham Lincoln might tell Nathan to kill this interloper at any moment. Billy moved very slowly.

Hmm. It seemed that Nathan was receiving transmission from on high.

He laughed and whispered an indecipherable string of syllables.

Finally he dropped into a cross-legged position and grinned. ‘Okay. I’ll sit here. Give me a tattoo.’

It wasn’t until Billy too squatted on the packed-dirt ground that his breathing steadied and his thudding heart began to tap more slowly.

As Nathan watched carefully, Billy finished assembling his American Eagle. He extracted several vials and set them on the ground. He tested the unit. It hummed.

‘One thing,’ the man said ominously, the razor rising slightly.

‘What’s that?’

‘Not a mole. Don’t tattoo me with a mole.’

‘I won’t do a mole, Nathan. I promise.’

Nathan folded the razor and put it away.

CHAPTER 34

‘We don’t call them guns.’

‘Yeah, yeah, I know. I forgot. I meant “machine”. Tattoo machine,’ Lon Sellitto was saying.

‘And we prefer “skin art” or “work”. “Tattoo” has a cultural connotation I’m not happy with.’ The petite woman, highly tattooed (skin arted?), gazed at Sellitto from over an immaculate glass counter, inside which were neatly arranged packets of needles, machine-not-gun parts, books, stacks of tattoo stencils, washable pens in all colors. Draw first, ink later, a sign warned.

The parlor was as clean as TT Gordon’s. Apparently legit skin artists took the disease stuff pretty seriously. You even got the impression that this woman would step out of the room to sneeze.

Her name was Anne Thomson and she was the owner of Femme Fatale Modification and Supplies. Mid-thirties, with short dark hair and only one tasteful nose piercing, she was really pretty. And part of that was the four-color tats, okay, artwork, on her chest and neck and arms. One — on the chest — was a combination of a snake and a bird. It vaguely reminded Sellitto of a picture he’d seen a few times on vacation in Mexico, some religious symbol. On her neck were some of the constellations, not only the stars but the animals they were inspired by. Crab, scorpion, bull. And when she turned once, he saw two sparkling red shoes on her shoulder. They looked real. Dorothy, my pretty …

Fuck art, Linc. That’s how I feel about art.

But not this. Sellitto liked the images. He really liked them. The pictures seemed to move, to expand and contract. Almost three-dimensional. How the hell did that work? It was as if he were looking at living paintings. Or at some entirely different creature, something not human but more than human. It took him back to some of the computer games his son had played a few years ago as a teenager. Sellitto remembered looking over the boy’s shoulder. ‘What’s that?’ Pointing at one of the creatures in the game. It looked like a snake with legs and sported a fish’s tail and human head.

‘You know, a nyrad.’ Like, obviously.

Oh. Sure. Nyrad.

Sellitto now looked up and realized he’d been caught staring at the woman’s chest.

‘I—’

‘It’s okay. They’re there to be looked at. Plural. Works, I mean. Not boobs.’

‘I—’

‘You just said that. I’m not thinking you’re a dirty old man. And you’re about to ask if they hurt.’

‘Naw, I figure they hurt.’

‘They did. But what in life doesn’t, if it’s important?’

Sex, dinner and collaring a prick of a criminal, Sellitto thought. Most of the time those didn’t hurt. But he shrugged. ‘What I was going to ask was, you draw them yourself? Design them, I mean.’

‘No. I went to an artist in Boston. The best on the East Coast. I just wanted Quetzalcoatl. Mexican god.’ Her finger touched the snake on her chest. ‘And we talked for a couple of days and she got to know me. She did the plumed serpent and recommended the constellations. I got Dorothy’s shoes too. She smiled. Sellitto smiled. ‘I don’t mean to be overly political, except I do. See, that’s how women artists handle an inking. A man goes into a male artist and says I want a chain, a death’s-head, a flag. And out he comes with a chain, a death’s-head or a flag. Women take a different approach. Less impulsive, less instant, more thoughtful.’

Sellitto muttered, ‘Kinda like life in general. Men and women, I mean.’ The questions about Unsub 11-5 still needed to be answered. But he now asked, ‘Hey, just curious, you know. How’d you get into this business?’

‘You mean, aside from the skin art, I seem like a schoolteacher?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I was a schoolteacher.’ Thomson let the pause linger. Timing. ‘Middle school. Now, there’s a DMZ for you. You know, a no-man’s-land between the hormones to the south and the attitudes to the north.’

‘I got a kid. A boy. He’s outta college now. But he had to get to that age, you know.’

She nodded. ‘It wasn’t flying for me. I went to get a work at a parlor in town and, hard to explain, it set me free. I quit the school and opened a shop. Now I do skin art and canvas painting too. Shows in SoHo, uptown too. Couldn’t’ve done it, though, if I hadn’t gotten inked in the first place.’

‘Impressive.’

‘Thanks. Now you were asking about the American Eagle machine.’

Thomson’s was the one shop in the Tri-State area that sold parts and needles for that model. She also had a used model for sale. To Sellitto it looked gnarly, dangerous. Like a ray gun from some weird science-fiction flick.

‘Can I ask? Why’re you interested?’

The detective debated. He decided he owed it to her to tell all. Maybe it was that she was so devoted to the art. Or that she had a really incredible chest. He told her what 11-5 was doing.

‘No, my God, no.’ Her eyes were as wide as the Mexican snakebird’s were narrow. ‘Somebody’s actually doing that, killing people with a machine?’ She shuddered and for a moment Thomson, for all her imposing creatures and Wizard of Oz shoes, didn’t seem mysterious or more than human at all. She seemed vulnerable and small. TT Gordon had had the same reaction — a sense of betrayal that somebody in their close-knit profession would use his talent to kill and do so in a particularly horrific way.

‘Afraid so.’

‘The American Eagles,’ she said. ‘Old machines, not as reliable as the new ones. One of the first portables.’

‘That’s what TT said.’

Thomson nodded. ‘He’s a good guy. You’re lucky he’s helping you. And I think I can help you too. Nobody’s ever bought a machine here but about a week ago a man came in and bought some needles for an American Eagle.’ She leaned forward, resting her hands on the counter. The shiny black ring on her right index finger turned out to be ink.

‘I didn’t pay much attention. Late twenties, thirties. White. Had a cap on, dark, and a scarf around his neck. It came up high, almost covering his chin. Sunglasses too. Which he didn’t need because the weather was as bad as now. That, the glasses, seemed hipster and uncool. But we get imagistas in here a lot. It’s a fine line between posing with ink and being real with ink.’

Imagistas. Clever.

Sellitto showed her the Identi-Kit pic.

Thomson shrugged. ‘Could be. Again, not paying much attention. Oh, but one thing I remember. He wasn’t inked that I could see. Wasn’t pierced either. Most skin artists’re pretty modded.’

‘He has one on his arm. Maybe a dragon, some creature. In red. Does that mean anything?’

The snake-and-bird woman shook her head. ‘No — after that book, that thriller, a lot of people wanted dragons. Copycats. No significance that I know.’

He then asked, ‘You know anything significant about a tattoo of the words “the second”? Or “fort”Y? They mean anything in the skin art world?’

‘No, not that I’ve ever heard.’

He displayed pictures of the tattoos.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘Old English font. That’s hard to do. And the lesions, the raised part? That was because of the poison?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, whatever else, he’s good. Real good.’

‘And he worked fast. Probably did that in ten, fifteen minutes.’

‘Really?’ She seemed astonished. ‘And the scarification too? The scalloped border?’

‘All in ten or fifteen. Does that, or the style, give you any idea who this guy might be?’

‘Not really … But I don’t see the outlines.’

‘No, TT said he used a bloodline. Freehand.’

‘Then nobody I know could do a work like that in fifteen minutes. And I know all the talented people in town. That’s one hell of an artist you’re dealing with.’

‘TT said he was from out of town but didn’t know where.’

‘Well, you don’t see that font much in the area. But I couldn’t tell you what’s hot now in Albany — or Norwalk or Trenton. My clientele’s pretty much downtown Manhattan.’

‘He paid cash for the needles, right?’

Why bother to ask?

‘Right.’

‘Any chance you’d still have the money? For prints.’

‘No. But it wouldn’t matter. He wore gloves.’

Natch …

‘I thought that was a little weird too. But not suspicious weird, you know?’

Imagistas.

‘Did he say anything?’

‘To me? No. Other than to ask for the needles.’

Sellitto, paying attention to that first sentence. ‘But?’

‘When he was leaving he got a call on his mobile. After I’d rung him up I stepped into the back room. When he was walking out the door he said, “Yeah, the Belvedere.” And then I think he said “address”. Anyway, that’s what I thought. But it might’ve been “bella dear” or something else.’

Sellitto wrote this down. Asked the standard: ‘Anything else you can think of?’

‘No, I’m afraid not.’

It was usually afraid not or no or don’t think so. But at least Thomson had thought about the question and was being honest.

He thanked her and, with a last glance at Quetzawhatever on her chest, headed back into the sleet, speed-dialing Rhyme to tell him don’t get your fucking hopes up but he might have a lead.

CHAPTER 35

A good workout.

As he walked from his health club back to his apartment on East 52nd Street to collect his car, Braden Alexander was counting the crunches he’d done. He’d given up after a hundred.

Counting them, that is. The crunches themselves? Plenty. He’d forgotten how many.

Alexander had a sedentary job — writing code for one of the big investment firms (one that actually had not been the subject of an investigation) — and the thirty-seven-year-old was determined to stay in good shape, despite the eight-hour days at his workstation — and the one-hour reverse commute to Jersey, where his company’s IT headquarters building was located.

And the curls? With the thirty-pound bells? Maybe two hundred. Damn, he sure felt it. He decided he’d take it a bit easier tomorrow. No need to push too far. It was more important to be consistent, Alexander knew. Every day he made the trek from his apartment west to the health club on Sixth Avenue. Every day, the stationary bike and curls and squats and, yeah, crunches, crunches, crunches … What do we think, 150?

Probably.

He glanced at himself in a window and thought: The weight’s okay. His skin seemed a little pale. Not so good, that. He and his family would get to an island soon. Maybe after Thanksgiving. Anyway, who wouldn’t look sickly on a day like this? The sleet had let up but the light was gray and anemic. He was actually looking forward to getting into his cubicle. He found it cozy, a word he wouldn’t use with anybody but his wife.

Today there was something else to look forward to. He’d be picking up a bicycle at his brother’s house in Paramus. Joey’d gotten a new mountain bike and was giving his old one to Alexander’s son. The boy was ecstatic and had texted twice from school, just to see how ‘everything was going?’

The impatience of youth.

He looked south and caught sight of the new Trade Tower, or whatever it was going to be called. He’d been working at his first job, crunching code for a bank, when the attack had happened, 2001. The new structure was impressive, architecturally more interesting than the simple rectangles of its predecessors. Still, nothing could ever match their grandeur, their style.

What a time that was. His first son had been born the day after the attack. Alexander and his wife had abandoned plans to name him after her father and had picked instead Emery, after the architectural firm Emery Roth & Sons, which along with Minoru Yamasaki had designed the original Trade Towers.

Alexander continued east back toward his apartment, where he’d collect his car and head to work. As he paused for a red light he happened to look back and caught a glimpse of someone behind him, head down. Some guy, young, in dark clothes and stocking cap. A bag or backpack on his shoulder. Was he the same one who’d been sitting in a coffee shop across the street from the health club?

He following me?

Alexander had lived in the city for fifteen years. He considered New York the safest urban area on earth. But he wasn’t a fool, either. He made his living because of bad guys. When he’d started as a programmer some years ago most of his work had been to hack together code that made the servers run more smoothly, expanded web traffic and allowed the various operating systems to talk to each other without stuttering. Over the years, though, he’d developed the specialty of security. Commercial hackers, terrorists and punks with too much time on their hands and too many cells in their brains now preyed on banking institutions like his employer with increasingly bold and brilliant attacks.

That had become Alexander’s specialty, throwing nails in the path of some pretty smart and pretty nasty hackers.

He’d heard of some computer security pros who’d been physically attacked. He sometimes wondered if he was at personal risk. He had no specific knowledge that any hackers knew his name but he also was aware that it was impossible to keep all information about yourself hidden from someone with enough drive to track you down.

Near his apartment building Alexander paused and, on the pretext of making a phone call, glanced back once more. The man in the cap and coat continued following, head down. He didn’t seem to be paying any attention to Alexander. Then without a pause the supposed hit hacker walked into a building across the street, an old one, now a commercial space, with a For Rent sign pasted across a dirty window. Maybe he was a Realtor or new tenant. Or a janitor examining a temperamental boiler — it was supposed to be another bone-chilling evening.

Amused at his own wasted concern, Alexander continued on to his building and to the entrance to the parking garage, where they kept the Subaru. The parking space was a luxury — it alone cost more than his first apartment. But a guaranteed slot in the city that brought the world alternate-side-of-the-street parking? Didn’t get any better than that — except it did: The space was enclosed, so he never had to shovel snow or scrape ice. Extremely enclosed, in fact. The space was in the third sub-basement.

He now waved to the cashier, who called, ‘Hey, Mr Alexander. When’s it gonna let up? You know what I mean?’ The skinny, gray-complexioned man gazed up at the sky.

He’d said virtually the same thing every day for the past week.

Alexander grinned and shrugged. He descended the spiral ramp of the dim place.

On the bottom floor, the Subie’s floor, as his wife had dubbed the vehicle, Alexander walked under the low ceiling toward where the front of his green car peeked out. The garage — this floor at least — seemed completely deserted. But he wasn’t feeling uneasy anymore, now that the imaginary killer shadowing him had disappeared into the building across the street. Besides, no mugger — or hacker intent on breaking Alexander’s typing fingers — would dare risk an attack here. The only way in was past the watchful attendant.

You know what I mean? …

As he approached the Subaru he pulled his keys out and hit the unlock button on the fob. The lights flashed. He continued on to the car, thinking of the bike for his son. He was looking forward to riding his own ten-speed with Emery through Central Park this weekend.

He was smiling at the prospective pleasure when a man stepped casually out from behind a wall to Alexander’s right and punched him in the neck.

‘The hell—?’ Alexander gasped and spun around.

Oh, Christ, Christ … The guy wore gray coveralls like a repairman or utility worker but his face looked like an alien’s — encased in a tight yellowish mask, latex.

Then he saw the hypodermic needle in the gloved, yellow hand.

Alexander touched his neck, which stung.

He’d poked him with something! The first thing he thought was: AIDS.

Some kind of psycho. No, no, no …

Then he thought: Nobody’s going to get away with this crap. Alexander had taken several self-defense courses and a kickboxing class at the gym. Not to mention being racked from the thousands of crunches and curls. He turned to face the guy and planted his feet firmly on the ground, drawing back his right arm, recalling how to hit fast and follow up.

One, two, feint, hit.

One, two …

But his arm wasn’t behaving. It was heavy. Too heavy even to lift. And he noted the terrible panic, the shock, fading. He didn’t even feel scared at all anymore.

And when the dim light grew dimmer he understood:

No, not tainted blood. Of course not. It was a sedative of some kind the asshole had injected him with. Sure, sure, this was the guy who’d been following him. He’d slipped down here from the building across the street. But how …? Oh, there. There was a small metal access door open. Behind it darkness, like a tunnel or a basement. And the guy’s mission? To kidnap Alexander. To get him to reveal codes or security flaws in his clients’ programs.

‘Ahhhl talll you … whah …’ Alexander was speaking. Trying to speak.

Say it! Come on! I’ll tell you what you want. Just let me go.

‘Lllll. Tllll. You waaaaa …’

The syllables were falling apart.

Then the words were just gurgling from his throat.

He was surprised to find he wasn’t standing any longer but sitting down, paralyzed, staring up at the masked freak. Looking around at his surroundings. The Subie’s tire. A Hershey bar wrapper. An oval of dried dog pee.

The attacker bent down over a backpack.

As the darkness grew, serious darkness now, Alexander squinted, looking at a weird tattoo on the man’s left arm. A snake … no, a centipede. With a human face.

Then he was lying on his back, too weak even to sit up any longer. The attacker roughly tugged Alexander’s wrists behind his back and cuffed them. Rolled him over on his back once more.

But just because this guy had the melted skin mask and a macabre tattoo didn’t mean he was a psychotic killer. No, he just wanted to get the codes to the Livingston Associates main server. Or the password to crack the Bank of Eastern Nassau’s security lock-out system.

Sure.

Not a wacko.

This was business was all. Only business. They didn’t want to hurt him. They were after data? Fine, he’d give them data. Passcodes? They’d get passcodes.

Only business, right?

But then why was he lifting Alexander’s jacket and shirt and staring at his abdomen intently? And reaching forward and stroking the skin with a rigid, probing finger?

Has to be … only …

Blackness enwrapped him completely.

CHAPTER 36

‘Where are you, Sachs?’

‘Almost there.’ Her voice was echoing through the speaker in Rhyme’s parlor. The criminalist was here with Pulaski and Cooper, while Amelia Sachs was presently streaking across Central Park, one of the traverses, headed east. ‘Hanging up. Gotta drive.’

It turned out there were forty-eight places in Manhattan in which ‘Belvedere’ figured in the name. This had been the conclusion of yet another team that Lon Sellitto had assembled at One Police Plaza. There’d been the Find-the-Out-of-Print-Book team, now disbanded. Then the current What-the-Fuck-Do-the-Words-the-Second-and-Forty-Mean team, still active.

Now the Which-Belvedere-Is-It team, assembled thanks to skin artist Anne Thomson’s fortuitous eavesdropping.

Four dozen instances of Belvedere in Manhattan (which seemed to be 11-5’s preferred hunting borough; besides, you can’t search everywhere).

Delis, apartment buildings, transport companies, boutiques, a cab company, a ferry.

An escort service.

A half hour ago, in Rhyme’s parlor, he and Sachs, along with Sellitto, Cooper and Pulaski, had debated which of the Belvederes were the most likely to be connected to the unsub. Of course, the name might have nothing to do with the next or a future target. It could be where he lived, or near where he lived, or his dry cleaner or where he boarded his cat. Or a business he was curious about. But, being cautious, they assumed it was a kill site and wanted to get tac teams to the most likely ones ASAP.

They’d decided three were good candidates for an attack. One was a deserted warehouse in the Chelsea area of Manhattan — north of Greenwich Village. It featured an extensive labyrinth of underground passages and storerooms. Perfect for their unsub’s purposes, though Cooper had made the point that it might be a little too deserted. ‘He needs to get a victim from somewhere.’

Rhyme considered this but tapped into some CCTV images there and noted that it had more pedestrian traffic than you’d think — including even some joggers out on this blustery day.

‘He only needs one,’ Rhyme pointed out.

Sellitto’d called ESU to have a team sent there.

The second Belvedere was an old movie theater on the Upper West Side, the sort of grande dame you used to see on Broadway, the ornate venues where Clark Gable or Marilyn Monroe would open films. It was closed at this hour and, according to one of Rhyme’s underground diagrams, had a number of basements, just the place for Unsub 11-5 to take his victims. Another ESU team was sent there.

The final possibility was an apartment building on Midtown’s East Side named the Belvedere. A grimy old structure, like the gothic Dakota. It featured both a large basement and an underground parking garage. The detective arranged for a third team to speed there.

Sachs had said, ‘Smells like that’s the one. I’ll go too.’

Rhyme had noted her eyes, that huntress look, the undeterred focus. Which he found so appealing, and so unnerving, at the same time. Sachs was one of the best crime scene cops Rhyme had ever known. But she was never more alive than when leading a dynamic entry in a tactical scenario.

She’d sprinted out the door, pulling her jacket on as she went. Sellitto had followed shortly after.

Now Rhyme got a message from Sellitto, also mobile, reporting that a tac team had hit the Belvedere warehouse in Chelsea and found nothing. ESU commander Bo Haumann had left a small surveillance team and divided up the others; one group was heading to the Belvedere Apartments and one to the theater, which was massive; the search would take some time.

Just after he disconnected, his phone line rang again. ‘Rhyme?’ Sachs’s voice came through the speakers.

‘Just heard from Lon,’ he told her. He explained that the warehouse was a bust. ‘But that means you’re getting some reinforcements. An ESU team’s headed to the apartment building where you are.’

‘Not are, Rhyme,’ she muttered. ‘Will be. Traffic’s lousy. And nobody knows how to drive in this weather. I’m on the sidewalk. Hold on.’ Rhyme heard a crash as presumably her Torino reseated itself on New York City asphalt. He wondered about debilitating damage to the drive train or the axles. ‘At this rate, ten minutes. And it’s just ’cross town. Jesus.’

Rhyme noted another incoming call on his phone.

‘I’ll call you back, Sachs. ESU’s on the other line.’

‘Lincoln, you there?’ It was Haumann.

‘Yes, Bo. What’s the status?’

‘Tac Team Two’s almost to the Belvedere Apartments. We’ll hit the basement in the building and the garage too. Any more evidence that he’s armed?’ Haumann would be remembering the earlier incident, at the hospital in Marble Hill, where Unsub 11-5 had threatened to shoot Harriet Stanton and Sachs.

‘Nothing further. But assume he is.’

‘I’ll pass it along.’ A pause as Haumann spoke to someone else in his car or ESU van. Rhyme couldn’t hear the exchange. ‘Okay, we’re rolling up silent.’

‘I’ll tell Amelia you’re there. She’ll want to be included in any tactical op. I wouldn’t take any chances. You can’t wait. Go in, dynamic, ASAP.’

‘Sure, Lincoln, we’ll do it.’

Rhyme said, ‘Tell your folks to look out for traps. That’s his new game. Gloves and respirators.’

‘Roger that. Hold on … Okay, Lincoln?’

‘I’m here.’

‘We’ve got a chopper in place. You want to log in and watch?’

‘Sure.’

The ESU commander gave him the code and a moment later Rhyme, Pulaski and Cooper were staring at the screen. It was a high-def image of two boxy ESU tactical trucks, designation numbers clearly visible on their roofs. Rhyme could see two dozen troops deploy through the front door of the apartment building and down the exit ramp of the garage. The parking attendant was being led away to safety by one of the officers.

The audio was up too. Rhyme could hear the ESU troops as they made their way through the facilities. ‘… Southwest corridor, level one, clear … Access door here … no, it’s sealed …’

Haumann disconnected and Rhyme called Sachs back. Told her about the conversation.

She sighed. ‘I’m ETA five minutes.’ He could hear the disappointment about missing the entry.

Rhyme’s attention swiveled to the radio feed from the tactical operation.

‘Tac Two A is going in, heading down the stairs to the lower level. Two B is heading down the garage ramp. Hold on … So far, no resistance, no innocents. We’re green. K.’

‘Rhyme, I’m almost there. I—’

But he missed what she said next. An officer’s voice blared out of the radio. ‘Tac Two B … we have a situation. Lower level, parking garage … Jesus … Call it in, call it in! … Fire department … Move, move, move! We need fire now! K.’

Fire? Rhyme wondered.

Another officer echoed his question. ‘What’s burning? I don’t see anything burning. K?’

‘Tac Two B. Negative on fire. The perp opened a standpipe to cover his getaway. We’ve got a flood. We can’t get through. Already six inches of water. And it’s rising. Need a fireman with a wrench to close the fucker. K.’

Rhyme heard a chuckle from the ether — apparently relief that they had to contend only with water, not an arson blaze.

He, however, was not amused. He knew exactly what their nimble unsub had done: unleashed the flood not only to slow down his pursuers, but to destroy whatever evidence he’d left behind.

CHAPTER 37

Running now, sprinting.

Billy Haven was underground, in the old train tunnel once more, heading back past the spot where Bear-man Nathan had come close to performing his straight-razor modification.

His backpack light as a leaf on his shoulder — that’s what adrenaline does — he sprinted fast. The latex mask was off but not the gloves or coveralls. He carried his shoes. He was in his stocking feet. There wasn’t, he’d learned in his research, any database for cloth footwear that might allow them to trace him. The booties were too slippery for sprinting.

Move, move, move …

The warning that had precipitated his rapid escape from the Belvedere parking garage had not been the squeal of brakes from the Emergency Service trucks or the quiet footfalls of the cops. He’d known a few moments before that that he was in danger. The police dispatcher had reported the address and mentioned the name Belvedere, as Billy had heard through the earbud, connected to his police scanner.

He’d then taken some measures to make sure the location — and the victim — would be useless to the police.

Thou shalt cleanse the crime scene of all that can incriminate.

Then he was back through the utility access port in the Belvedere parking garage’s wall.

And underground once more.

Finally it was safe, Billy figured, to get to the surface. Chest aching, coughing shallowly, he climbed through another access door into the basement of a Midtown office building. It was one of those scuffed limestone functionaries of architecture, three-quarters of a century old, possibly more. Ten, twelve stories high, with dimly lit, jerky elevators that prompted you to bless yourself before you stepped inside.

Billy, though, took the stairs from the basement and, after checking, eased into the first-floor hallway, the professional home of ambulance chasers, accountants and some import-export operations whose names in English appeared under Cyrillic letters or Asian pictograms. He stripped off the coveralls, stuffed them into a trash bin and pulled on a different stocking cap, beige for a change. Shoes back on.

At the greasy glass door leading onto the street Billy paused and looked for police. None. This made sense; he was far enough away from the site of the attack at the Belvedere. The officers would have their hands full for some time there. It amused him to think of what was going on in the garage.

Stepping out onto the street he moved quickly east.

How had the great anticipator anticipated this? Yes, he’d been to the Belvedere several times to scope out the place. Maybe he’d picked up some trace there that had been discovered. That seemed unlikely but, with Rhyme, anything was possible.

Walking through the sleet, he kept his head down and thought back to any mistakes he might’ve made. Then: Yes, yes … he remembered. A week or so ago he’d called directory assistance to get the number for the Belvedere to check on the hours of the parking garage. He’d been in the tattoo supply store, buying extra needles for the American Eagle machine. That’s how they’d found him.

This raised a question: The only reason the owner would have mentioned the Belvedere was because the police wanted to know who’d bought an American Eagle or needles for it. But how had they learned that this was his murder weapon?

He’d have to do some more thinking about that.

A subway station loomed and he descended the slushy stairs then caught a train south. In twenty minutes Billy was back at his workshop, in the shower, letting the hot water blast his skin as he scrubbed and scrubbed.

Then toweling off, dressing again.

He clicked on the radio. A short time later the news reported another attack by the ‘Underground Man’, which had struck him as a rather pathetic nickname. Couldn’t they come up with anything better?

Still no mention of Amelia Sachs or anybody else falling victim to a strychnine attack. Which meant that by either diligence or luck the crime scene people had missed getting stuck by the needle in Samantha’s purse.

Billy had known all along the Modification would be like a battle, with wins and losses on both sides. He’d succeeded with two victims. The police had had some victories too. This was to be expected — in fact, it had been anticipated. Now, he reflected, he had to be a bit more serious about protecting himself.

An idea occurred to him.

Surprisingly simple, surprisingly good.

The applicable Commandment for this situation would be: Know thine enemy. But know the friends and family of thine enemy too.

CHAPTER 38

‘Hell, Amelia, how bad is it?’ Sellitto asked.

He and Sachs were standing in parallel positions — hands on hips — looking down into the dusky parking garage beneath the Belvedere Apartments.

‘Bad,’ she muttered. She looked over the city schematic of this scene. She ran her finger over the parking area and the abandoned New York Central train tunnel. ‘Ruined. Gone. All of the evidence.’

Sellitto stamped his feet, presumably to warm them against the stabbing chill of the icy muck they stood in. Sachs had stamped too; it didn’t work. Just made her toes sting more.

She noted Bo Haumann nearby, on his mobile. The ESU commander disconnected and strode over to them. Nodded.

Sellitto asked, ‘Anything?’

The wiry, compact man, wearing a turtleneck under his shirt, strode forward. He rubbed a hand over his gray crew-cut hair. His eyebrows were frosty but he seemed completely unfazed by the cold. ‘He’s gone. Rabbited. Got a team into the tunnel from a manhole up the street. But even that’s useless. All they could say is “No trace of him.”’

Sachs gave a grim laugh. ‘No trace. In both senses of the word.’

Rhyme’s concern had proved warranted. By opening the fire department standpipe, Unsub 11-5 had managed to obliterate the crime scene with calculated efficiency. The perp had then slipped out through the doorway by which he’d gained access to the parking garage, leaving it open. Within minutes, the geyser of water had flooded the ground floor of the garage and cascaded through the door into the tunnel below — which was to have been the killing zone.

When it comes to crime scene contaminants, water can be worse than fire. Much trace can survive flames and, while walls may collapse, the position of objects and architectural elements and even human bodies at the scene remains largely unchanged. A flood, though, is like a big mixing bowl, not only diluting and destroying and blending, but also moving items far from their original positions.

Water is, Rhyme had frequently pointed out, the universal solvent.

Emergency Service officers had cleared the scene and gotten the victim to the street level. He was doped up but conscious and his only injuries appeared to be bruises from where the water had slammed him into a wall. The unsub hadn’t had time to start on the mod. The vic was bordering on hypothermia but the medical technicians got him out of his drenched clothing and into thermal blankets.

After extracting him, and clearing the scene, the police retreated while two firemen in full biohazard outfits waded through the torrent to shut the flow off. They took water samples too. Rhyme had been concerned that the unsub might have spilled into the water some toxin that, even if diluted, could injure or kill.

An ESU officer came up to them. ‘Detectives. Captain.’

‘Go ahead,’ Haumann said.

‘It’s draining and the fire department’s hooked up a pumper. But it’s still a flood. Oh, and they’ve done a preliminary test of the water and there’s no biohazard or chemicals, nothing significant, at any rate. So they’re pumping to the sewer drains. Should be pretty clear in about an hour.’

The officer said to Sachs, ‘They said they found something you’ll want to see, Detective. One of the firemen’s bringing it out now.’

‘What?’ she asked.

‘Just a plastic bag. All I know.’

She nodded, not holding out much hope it had anything to do with the case. It might hold a banana peel, a joint, coins for parking meters.

Though there was always the chance it was the perp’s wallet or Social Security card.

Nothing more to do here. Sachs and Sellitto walked to the ambulance. They stepped inside, through the back, closed the door. Braden Alexander was sitting in a blue robe, shivering. The ambulance was heated but the man had just gone for a serious dunking in near-freezing water.

‘How’re you doing?’ Sellitto asked.

His jaw trembling. ‘Cold, hazy from whatever the son of a bitch gave me. They said it’s propofol.’ He stuttered as he spoke. His words were slurred too. ‘And seeing him, what he was wearing, it freaked me out.’

‘Could you describe him?’

‘Not real well. He was about six feet, pretty good shape. White. But he wore this yellow latex mask. Jesus. I freaked. I mean, I totally freaked. I said that, didn’t I? Eyeholes and nose and mouth. That was it.’

Sellitto showed him the Identi-Kit image.

‘Could be. Probably. But the mask, you know.’

‘Sure. Clothes?’

‘When he came at me in the garage, he was in coveralls, I think. I was freaked.’ More shivering. ‘But I’d seen him earlier and he was wearing something else. If it was him. He went into that building there.’

Ah, maybe they had an intact crime scene after all. Sachs sent a CS officer to take a look, with an Emergency Service backup.

‘Did he say anything?’ Sellitto asked.

‘No. Just jabbed me with a needle. Then I started to pass out. But I saw him …’ His voice faded. ‘I saw him get a scalpel out of his backpack.’

‘A scalpel, not just a knife?’

‘Definitely a scalpel. And he looked like he knew what to do with it. Oh, and he was touching my skin. On my stomach. Touching and pinching it. Jesus. What was that all about?’

‘He’s done that before,’ Sachs said. ‘We don’t know exactly why.’

‘Oh, but I remember that as he reached down, his sleeve went up, you know. And I saw he had this tattoo. It was weird. A centipede, I’m pretty sure. Yeah. But, you know, with a face.’

‘What color was it?’ Sellitto asked.

‘Red. Now, next I know I came to and was choking and the cops, the police were dragging me out of the water. I was so cold, cold. Man. It was like I was spinning around in the ocean. Is this the guy who’s been killing those people in town?’

Sometimes you withheld, sometimes you told.

‘It’s likely.’

‘Why me?’

‘We aren’t sure what his motive is. Do you have any enemies, anybody who might want to do this?’ Sachs and Rhyme had not completely dismissed the theory that the unsub was using the apparent serial killings to cover up the murder of a specific victim, lost in the general carnage of Unsub 11-5.

But Alexander said, ‘I do computer security work and I was thinking I jammed the wrong hacker, and he wanted to nail me. I thought the guy who went into the building, the one maybe following me, might’ve been a strong-arm, whatever you’d call it. But I don’t know of anybody specific.’

‘That’s probably unlikely,’ Sellitto said. ‘We think the people he’s picking are random.’

Happenstance victims …

They took Alexander’s contact information.

Sachs donned gloves and collected the cuffs, which had been removed by a responding, put them into a collection bag and filled out the chain-of-custody card. She made a note to get the fingerprints of the medic who’d removed the cuffs. But she had no doubt that their diligent unsub wasn’t going to get careless now.

They stepped out of the ambulance and were blasted by the chill wind.

A crime scene officer approached, the one she’d sent to check on the building nearby — where Alexander had said he’d seen a man following him. The CS cop, a sinewy young man in round glasses, said, ‘Nobody in the building. And we went through the basement real careful. No exit from down there, no way to get to the parking garage.’

‘Okay, thanks.’

Two firemen approached, their gear dripping. One held a small plastic bag by the corner. Ah, the maybe evidence. She wasn’t concerned about contamination; the fireman wore neoprene biohazard gloves.

He greeted them. ‘Heard you were the crime scene officer in charge.’

‘Right.’ Sachs nodded. ‘How is it down there?’

‘Mess. It’s still under eight inches of water. And covers the whole ground floor. Then the tunnel underneath the lower level? That’s a lake too.’

‘What’d you find?’ Nodding at the bag.

‘Was against the wall near where the victim was. Might be from your boy, might not. There was nothing else, though.’

Banana peel, pot, coins …

She took the bag in her gloved hand. Inside were small metal fixtures, about an inch high, in various shapes. Hardware of some kind, Sachs guessed. She showed the bag to Sellitto, who shrugged. She slipped this into an evidence bag and took the fireman’s name and badge number for the chain-of-custody card. Wrote the details down and had him sign. She did the same.

‘I want to go down there,’ Sachs said to one of the firemen. ‘Borrow some boots?’

‘Sure. We’ll suit you up.’

Another fireman came by with a cardboard tray, passing around coffee. Sellitto took one but Sachs declined. She had no taste for anything at the moment except finding a lead, any lead, to Unsub 11-5.

CHAPTER 39

‘They’re implants.’

TT Gordon, the tat artist decorated with superheroes and an excessively stylish chin, was back in Rhyme’s parlor.

Standing at the examination table beside Mel Cooper, he peered at what the fireman had collected at the crime scene in the Belvedere Apartments parking garage: loose metal bits in a plastic bag. They weren’t hardware, as Sachs had originally thought, but were in the shape of numbers and letters. Grooves had been filed in them and some off-white substance smeared into the notches.

About an inch high each, they sat on a sterile pad of Teflon.

‘And what are implants?’ Rhyme asked, wheeling closer.

The skinny man rubbed at Batman’s face on his lean arm. Rhyme could see a portion of another superhero on the other. Why those particular two comic characters? he wondered.

But then: Why not?

‘Implants’re, they’re sort of an extreme form of modding. You cut slits into the skin and feed them in. Eventually the skin shrinks and you can see the shape or the letters raised. You don’t find ’em much. But inkings’re a dime a dozen nowadays — like I was saying yesterday. Every clerk, public relations assistant and lawyer has a tat now. You need implants and scars to be different. Who knows what it’ll be in ten years. Actually, I don’t think I want to know.’

Sachs asked, ‘Does it tell us anything about the unsub?’

‘Confirms what I was saying before. They’re rare here. I don’t know any artists who do them in the area. It’s technically, you know, a surgical procedure and you need good training. You see them mostly in the Midwest and Appalachia, West Virginia, mountains of North Carolina. People who want to lead a more alternative life. I mean, more alternative than I,’ said TT Gordon, the grammarian tattoo artist.

‘You’d think implants were a macho thing but, fact is, women go for them more. They’re pretty dangerous. They’re made out of materials where there’s not much chance of rejection but there’s the infection issue. And, worse, they’ll migrate. And then you’re in trouble.’

‘And,’ Mel Cooper said, regarding a computer, attached to the gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer, ‘you’re also in trouble if the implants happen to contain extremely concentrated doses of nicotine. Which these do.’

‘Nicotine,’ Rhyme mused.

‘That’s poison?’ Ron Pulaski asked.

‘Oh, yes,’ Cooper said. ‘I worked a case a few years ago. Nicotine used to be applied as an insecticide. You could buy it raw, concentrated. The perp in that case got his hands on some. He wanted to dispatch his mother for the inheritance and, since she smoked, he thought it’d be a good idea to lace her food with it. She was dead in about a half hour. If he’d done small doses instead of a single large one he might’ve gotten away with it. We found out that it was as if she’d smoked eight hundred cigarettes in an hour and covered her arm with patches.’

‘What’s the formula?’ Rhyme asked.

‘A parasympathomimetic alkaloid. Comes from the nightshade family of plants.’

Sachs said, ‘The implants don’t look that big. How concentrated was the dosage?’

Regarding the mass spectrum, Cooper said, ‘Huge. If he’d implanted these in the dermis, the victim would have been dead within twenty minutes, I’m estimating.’

‘God almighty.’ From superhero man.

‘A painful death?’ Sachs asked.

‘Would be,’ Rhyme said, uninterested in that. He cared more about origins: ‘Where would he’ve gotten the implants?’

Gordon shrugged. ‘I don’t know any sources here. Mostly you want them, you go online.’

‘No,’ Rhyme countered, ‘he’d buy them in a brick-and-mortar store, again. And pay cash.’

He gazed at the bits of metal again. What they represented, Rhyme reflected, was obvious. A simple rearrangement resulted in yet another number. The ordinal ‘17th’.

Sachs had donned a face mask and double gloves. She was examining one metal character. The number 7. ‘We’ve got tool marks. Distinctive filing. That’s something.’

It might be possible to link the poisoned implants to a metal file in the suspect’s possession — provided that they found the file, of course; there was no national registry of tool marks, as there was for fingerprints, DNA and rifle slugs.

‘Source of the poison?’ Rhyme inquired.

Sachs went online and reported, ‘Well, this’s interesting. You know e-cigarettes?’

‘No.’

‘Smokeless cigarettes. They have batteries and a flavor capsule. There’s sort of a vapor you inhale. You can buy commercial nicotine, unflavored and in flavors, to add to the capsules. It’s in liquid form. They call it “juice”.’

What people do to their bodies, Rhyme reflected. ‘How many sources?’

‘Several dozen.’ Mel Cooper looked over the computer. ‘What’s for sale on the market is toxic, yeah, but nothing like this. The unsub either distilled that or made his own.’

‘Okay. What else do we have?’

Sachs had explained that wading through the ground floor of the parking garage and the tunnel had yielded nothing; the flood had been massive. Still, they had found some evidence on and inside the bag containing the implants.

The bag was a typical (and untraceable) food storage bag. At the top was a strip of matte-finish plastic so a cook could write down what the bag contained or the date it went into the freezer. Though the water had washed away much of the unsub’s writing, faint pink lettering remained. The message was No. 3 — for the third attack, Rhyme assumed.

‘Don’t know how helpful that is,’ Rhyme grumbled. ‘But put it on the board.’

Cooper ran several other samples. ‘Here’s a combination of human albumin and sodium chloride — the percentages are consistent with drugs used in plastic surgery procedures.’

‘Ah, that again,’ Rhyme said. ‘Our perp’s got in mind changing appearance. But can’t see him going under the knife quite yet. He’s too busy. But afterward, that’s part of his plan.’

Lon Sellitto called in. He had remained at the Belvedere to run the canvassing for witnesses. ‘Linc, nobody saw anything. You know what’s happening, don’t you?’

‘Enlighten me.’

‘People know this guy is using the underground to get close to his victims. They’re afraid that if they say they saw anything, he’ll get them in their bathroom or laundry room or garage.’

Rhyme couldn’t argue with that attitude. What could be more frightening than to think you were alone and safe in the lower levels of your home or office or a public building and learn that you weren’t alone at all; you had lethal company. Like a moist, venomous centipede uncurling under the blankets of your bed as you slept.

Sachs had brought Braden Alexander’s clothing too. Cooper went through each item carefully but the water had eradicated all trace — if there’d been any in the first place, which was unlikely, Sachs said, because the contact between the two men had been minimal. The handcuffs revealed no trace and, like the others, were generic.

Cooper ran other samples of swabs from the implant bag. Most were negative. But finally he had a hit. Reading from the computer screen, he said, ‘Hypochlorous acid.’

Rhyme looked over the mass spectrum. ‘Curious. It’s pure. Not diluted.’

‘Right.’ Cooper reached under the face shield and shoved his glasses higher on his nose. Rhyme wondered, as he often did, why he didn’t get frames that fit.

Hypochlorous acid — a form of chlorine — was added to New York City drinking water, as in most cities, for purification. But because this sample was undiluted, it had not come from the flood that had destroyed the Belvedere parking garage crime scene. This was the form of the chemical in its pure state, before it was added to the water system.

Rhyme said, musing, ‘It’s a weak acid. At higher levels, I suppose, it could be deadly, though. Or maybe he just picked it up because he was near one of the boxes that dispense it into the water supply. Sachs, at the first or second scenes, in the tunnels? There were water pipes, right?’

‘Water and, in one, sewage.’

‘Incoming and outgoing,’ joked Pulaski. Drawing laughs. From everyone except Rhyme.

‘Any other pipes — maybe some feeding chlorine into the mains?’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘I want to find out. If this chlorine is from tap-water purification it’s not helpful. If it’s from a poison he’s planning to use, then we can start checking sources.’ Rhyme called up the pictures from the first two crime scenes. ‘Let’s get somebody back to the scenes and find out if there’s a feeder line for the chemical.’

Sachs asked, ‘Do you want Crime Scene to search?’

‘No, just a uniform’ll be fine,’ Rhyme said. ‘Anybody. But soon. Now.’

Sachs called Dispatch and had patrol cars sent to each of the two previous crime scenes, with instructions on what to look for.

Twenty minutes later Sachs’s phone rang. She answered, then hit speaker.

‘Okay, Officer, you’re on with me and Lincoln Rhyme.’

‘I’m at the Elizabeth Street scene, Detective. The Chloe Moore homicide.’

‘Where are you exactly?’ Rhyme asked.

‘In the tunnel, next to the crime scene lamps and battery packs.’

Rhyme told him, ‘I need you to look for any pipes or reservoirs marked “hypochlorous acid”, “chlorine” or the letters “Cl”. They’d have a hazard diamond on them and probably a skin and eye irritant warning.’

‘Yes, sir. I’ll do that.’

The patrolman kept up a narrative as he walked from the place where the body’d been found, near the claustrophobia tunnel, to the bricked-off wall a hundred yards away.

Finally: ‘Nothing, sir. Only markings are DS and DEP stamped on the pipes.’ Department of Sanitation and Department of Environmental Protection, which was the agency overseeing the New York City water supply.

‘And some kind of boxes marked IFON — don’t know what that is. But nothing about chemicals.’

Sachs thanked him and disconnected.

Soon a member of the other team called in, from underneath the Provence² crime scene — the slaughterhouse octagon, where Samantha Levine had died.

This officer reported the same. No DEP systems for introducing hypochlorous acid into the water system.

After disconnecting, Rhyme said, ‘So, it’s probably got some connection with the unsub. Let’s find out where somebody would buy it, or how it’s made. Ron?’

But a search revealed what Rhyme suspected: There were dozens of chemical supply companies in the tri-state area. And the unsub would have bought a small amount, so he’d use cash. He might even have stolen a can or two. A useless lead.

Rhyme wheeled forward to the examination table, staring at the implants, his mind considering the implications of the numbers.

‘We have “the second”, “forty” and “seventeenth”. What the hell is he saying?’ Rhyme shook his head. ‘I still like the idea he’s sending us someplace. But where?’

Sachs said, ‘No scalloped border, like the others.’

But TT Gordon pointed out, ‘That was scarification, remember? If he was going to include them he would have used the same scalpel that he used to cut the incisions for the implants. He would’ve done that later, after he’d placed the implant. From what I heard, sounds like you interrupted him before he could get very far.’

‘Well, he escaped before he got very far,’ Sachs muttered.

Pulaski added, ‘No “the” with the seventeenth.’

‘Maybe that’s exactly how the quote goes, whatever that quote is.’

‘Implants take time, too,’ Gordon noted.

‘Good point. He’d want to move fast.’ Rhyme nodded toward the tattoo artist. ‘“The” might have been too much.’

Everyone’s eyes were on the numbers.

What the hell was the unsub’s message? What could he possibly be wanting to say to us, to the city, to the world?

If his model was the Bone Collector, as it seemed to be, that message was about revenge most likely. But for what? What did ‘the second’, ‘forty’, and now ‘17th’ say about a wrong he wanted vindicated?

That you could also dub Unsub 11-5 the Skin Collector wasn’t enough for Rhyme. There was more to his purpose, he sensed, than being a legacy of a psychotic killer stalking the streets of New York more than a decade ago.

TT Gordon broke the silence, ‘Anything else you need me for?’

‘No,’ Rhyme said. ‘Thanks for your help. Appreciate it.’

Drawing a raised eyebrow from Amelia Sachs. Civility was not a Lincoln Rhyme quality. But he found he was enjoying the company of this man with elaborate facial hair and a command of Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style.

Gordon pulled his tuxedo jacket on. Again, Rhyme thought, it seemed too thin for such a slight frame on a foul, gray day like this one. ‘Good luck.’ He paused in front of Rhyme, looking him over. ‘Hey, looks like you’re one of us, dude.’

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.

CHAPTER 40

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.

CHAPTER 41

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.

CHAPTER 42

‘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.’

‘Wonder why?’ Sachs offered with a droll smile.

‘I better call my parents. They might hear about this. I want to tell them I’m okay.’

‘Sure.’

While Seth did this, dialing with shaking hands, Sachs called Rhyme. She gave him the details. ‘Cheyenne’s running the scene.’

‘Good.’

‘She’ll get everything over to you in a half hour.’

He disconnected.

Seth winced as he pressed his bandaged left wrist, the one that had taken the bulk of his weight and been cut by the handcuffs. ‘What does he want, Amelia? Why’s he doing this?’

‘We aren’t sure. It seems he was inspired by a perp Lincoln and I investigated years go. The first case we worked together.’

‘Oh, Pam told me about that. The Bone Collector, right?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘Serial killer?’

‘Not technically. Serial killing’s a sado-sexual crime — if the perp’s male. The criminal a decade ago had another agenda and so does this one. The first killer was obsessed with bones; our unsub’s obsessed with skin. ’Cause we stopped him a few times, he’s turned on us. He must’ve found out Pam and I are close and he went after her. You had the bad luck to be here at the wrong time.’

‘Better me than Pam. I—’

‘Seth!’

The front door to the building flew open and Pam, breathless after her run from the subway burst into the hall. She threw herself into his arms before he had even risen to his feet. He wobbled and nearly fell.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Fine, I guess,’ he muttered. ‘Bumped and scraped a little.’ Seth glanced at her with hollow eyes, wary eyes. It was as if he were struggling to keep from blaming her for the attack. Pam noticed, frowned. She wiped tears then swiped away strands of hair plastered to her pink cheeks.

Sachs put her arm around the girl, sensed the tension and let go. She stepped back.

‘What happened?’ Pam asked.

The detective explained, not sparing any details. Given the difficult life that Pam had experienced, she wasn’t a person you had to hand-feed hard news to.

Still, her taut face seemed to take on an accusatory gaze as she listened to the story, as if it was Sachs’s fault the killer had come here. Sachs dug a fingernail into her thumb, hard.

Cheyenne Edwards appeared in the doorway, still in coveralls but without the face mask or surgeon’s cap. She carted a milk crate containing a dozen plastic and paper bags.

‘Chey, how’s it look?’

The officer grimaced and said to Sachs, ‘Had to save his life, did you? I mean, could you get any more outsiders into that storeroom? One of the most contaminated scenes I’ve ever run.’ She laughed and then winked at the young man. ‘Can I roll you?’

‘Can you—?’

‘The perp touched you, right?’

‘Yeah, grabbed me around the chest when he injected me with that crap.’

Edwards took a dog hair roller and collected trace everywhere on his shirt that Seth indicated. She bagged the adhesive strips and headed to the CSU rapid response van, calling, ‘I’ll get this stuff to Lincoln.’

Sachs said to Pam, ‘You can’t stay here. I think you should move into your bedroom at Lincoln’s. We’ll have officers here until you pack what you need.’

The young woman looked at Seth, and the implicit question that fluttered between them was: I could stay with you, right?

He said nothing.

Sachs said, ‘And, Seth, you should probably stay with some friends or your family. He could’ve gotten your address. You’re a witness and that means you’re at risk.’ This was purely practical, not a ploy to separate Romeo and Juliet. Pam, though, shot Sachs an expression that said, I know what you’re up to.

Seth wasn’t looking at Pam as he said, ‘There’re a couple guys I know from the ad agency. Have a place in Chelsea. I can crash there.’ Sachs could see he wasn’t concealing his blame for Pam very well.

‘I hope it won’t have to be long. And?’ she asked Pam. ‘You coming to Lincoln’s?’

Her eyes looked over Seth with dismay. She said softly, ‘Think I’ll stay with my family.’

Referring to the foster family who’d raised her, the Olivettis.

A good choice. But Sachs was nonetheless stabbed by jealousy. By the subtle reproach. And the blatant choice of words.

My family.

Which doesn’t include you.

‘I’ll drive you there,’ Sachs said.

‘Or we could take the train,’ Pam said, glancing at Seth.

‘They want me to go to the hospital,’ he said. ‘For tests, I guess. After that I think I’ll just go hang with the guys downtown.’

‘Well, I could go with you. To the hospital at least.’

‘Naw, just after this … kind of want to chill. Get some alone time, you know?’

‘Sure. I guess. If you want.’

He staggered to his feet and walked into her apartment, collected his jacket and computer bag, then returned. He hugged Pam once, in a brotherly way, and pulled on his jacket and snagged his bag, then joined the EMTs outside, who helped him into the ambulance.

‘Pam—’

‘Not a word. Don’t say a word,’ the young woman growled. She pulled out her cell phone and placed a call to her ‘family’, asking for a ride. She walked inside. Sachs asked a patrolman to keep an eye on her until the Olivettis showed up. He said he would.

Then her phone hummed. She glanced at caller ID and answered, saying to Lincoln Rhyme, ‘I’m finished here. I’ll—’

The criminalist’s grim voice interrupted. ‘He got another vic, Sachs.’

Oh, no. ‘Who?’

‘Lon Sellitto.’

CHAPTER 43

Lincoln Rhyme observed that he’d have no problems getting in to the critical care unit of Hunter University Medical Center, where Lon Sellitto had been admitted not long before. The place was, of course, fully disabled accessible. Houses of healing are made for wheels as much as feet.

‘Oh, Lincoln, Amelia.’ Rachel Parker, Sellitto’s partner of many years, rose and gripped Rhyme’s hand and then hugged Sachs. She turned to Thom and threw her arms around him too.

The handsome, solid woman, whose face was red from crying, sat back down in one of the orange Fiberglas chairs in the scuffed room. Two vending machines, one of soda, the other full of sugary or salty treats in crisp cellophane bags, were the only decorations.

‘How is he?’ Sachs asked.

‘They don’t know yet. They don’t know anything.’ Rachel wiped more tears. ‘He came home. He said he had the flu and just wanted to lie down for a bit. When I was leaving for my shift he didn’t look good. I left but then I thought, no, no, he doesn’t have the flu. It’s something else.’ Rachel was a nurse and had worked trauma rooms for some years. ‘I came back and found him convulsing and vomiting. I cleared an airway and called nine one one. The medic said it seemed to be poisoning. What had he eaten or had to drink recently? They thought it was food poisoning. But no way. You should’ve seen him.’

‘Sachs, show your shield. Tell somebody that Lon was running a case involving water hemlock, tetrodotoxin, concentrated nicotine and a plant that contains atropine, hyoscyamine and scopolamine. Oh, and hypochlorous acid. That might help them.’

She scribbled this down and walked to the nurses’ station, relayed the information and then returned.

‘Was he attacked? Tattooed?’ Rhyme asked. Then explained about the unsub’s MO.

‘No. He must’ve ingested it,’ said Rachel. She straightened her mass of brown hair, laced with gray strands. ‘On the way to the hospital he came to briefly. He was pretty disoriented but he looked at me and seemed to recognize me. His eyes, they kept flipping into and out of focus. The pain was terrible! I think he broke a tooth, his jaw was pressed so tight together.’ A sigh. ‘He said a couple of things. First, that he’d had a bagel with some salmon, cream cheese. At a deli in Manhattan, downtown.’

‘Unlikely to get any poison into his food in a public facility,’ Rhyme said.

‘I thought that too. But he said something else.’

‘What was that?’ Sachs asked.

‘He said your name, Amelia. And then “coffee”. Or “the coffee”. Does that mean anything?’

‘Coffee.’ Sachs grimaced. ‘It sure does. At the Belvedere scene there was a fireman walking around with cartons of coffee. He offered some to both of us. Lon took one. I didn’t.’

‘Fireman?’ Rhyme asked.

‘No,’ Sachs said grimly. ‘It was Eleven-Five, wearing a fireman’s uniform. Goddamn it! He was right in front of us. Of course that’s who it was. I remember he was wearing gloves when he passed out the coffee. Jesus. He was two feet away from me. And had a bio mask on. Naturally.’

‘Excuse me.’ A voice behind them.

The doctor was a slight East Indian with a powdery complexion and busy fingers. He blinked when he noted the pistol on Sachs’s right hip then relaxed, seeing the gold shield on the left. Rhyme’s wheelchair received a fast, uninterested glance.

‘Mrs Sellitto?’

Rachel stepped forward. ‘It’s Parker. Ms. I’m Lon’s partner.’

‘I’m Shree Harandi. The chief toxicologist here.’

‘How is he? Please?’

‘Yes, well, he is stable. But his condition is not good, I must tell you. The substance he ingested was arsenic.’

Rachel’s face filled with dismay. Sachs put her arm around the woman.

Arsenic was an element, a metalloid, which meant it had characteristics of metals and non-metals, like antimony and boron. And it was, of course, extremely toxic. Rhyme reflected that the unsub had moved beyond plant-based toxins to a different category altogether — elemental poisons were no more dangerous but they were easier to come by since they had commercial uses and could simply be purchased in lethal strengths; you didn’t need to extract and concentrate them.

‘I see there are police here.’ Now he glanced at the wheelchair with more understanding. ‘Ah, I’ve heard about you. You are Mr Rhymes.’

‘Rhyme.’

‘And I know Mr Sellitto is a police officer too. You gave me the information about the possible poisons?’

‘That’s right,’ Sachs said.

‘Thank you for that but we determined arsenic quickly. Now, I must tell you. His condition is critical. The dose of the substance was high. The organs affected are the lungs, kidneys, liver and skin and he’s already had changes in fingernail pigmentation known as leukonychia striata. That is not a good sign.’

‘Inorganic arsenite?’ Rhyme asked.

‘Yes.’

Arsenic (III) is the most dangerous of all types of the toxin. Rhyme was quite familiar with the toxin. He’d run two cases in which it had been used as a murder weapon — in both cases spouses (one husband, one wife) had dispatched their partners with the substance.

Three other cases he’d run of suspected arsenic poisoning had turned out to be accidental. The toxin occurs naturally in groundwater, particularly where fracking — high-pressure geologic fracturing to extract oil and gas — has occurred.

In fact, throughout history, for every intentional victim of arsenic poisoning — like Francesco I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany — there were many more accidental victims: Napoleon Bonaparte, possibly done in by the wallpaper of the rooms to which he’d been exiled on St Helena; Simón Bolívar (the water in South America); and the American ambassador to Italy in the 1950s (flaking paint in her residence). It was also possible that the madness of King George was due to the metalloid.

‘Can we see him?’ Sachs asked.

‘I’m afraid not. He’s unconscious. But a nurse will call you when he comes to.’

Rhyme noted and, for Rachel’s sake, appreciated the conjunction.

When, not if.

The doctor shook hands. ‘You believe someone actually did this intentionally?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Oh, my.’

His mobile rang and without a word he turned away to answer.

CHAPTER 44

In October 1818 an attractive woman with an angular face and piercing eyes died at the age of thirty-four in Spencer County, Indiana.

There is some debate as to what was the cause of Nancy Lincoln’s death — possibly tuberculosis or cancer but the general consensus is that she was a victim of milk sickness, which claimed thousands of lives in the nineteenth century. Although the actual cause can’t be pinpointed, one fact about Nancy’s death is well documented: her nine-year-old son, Abraham, the future president of the United States, helped his father build the woman’s coffin.

Milk sickness perplexed medical professionals for years, until it was finally discovered that the cause was tremetol, a highly toxic alcohol, which made its way into a cow’s milk after the animal had grazed on white snakeroot.

This plant is a nondescript, workaday herb that is hardly an aesthetic contribution to any garden, and accordingly Billy Haven didn’t enjoy the plant as a subject to sketch. But he loved its toxic properties.

When ingested, tremetol causes the victim to suffer excruciating abdominal pain, intense nausea and thirst, uncontrollable tremors and explosive vomiting.

Even a small dosage can result in death.

Head down, wearing a short-brimmed brown fedora — very hipster — and long black raincoat, Billy was making his way through Central Park, the west side. In his gloved hand was a briefcase. He was walking south and had made a serious trek from Harlem, but he wanted to avoid the CCTV cameras in the subway, even if his appearance was different from what the Underground Man had worn during the prior attacks.

Yes, tremetol was his weapon but the pending attack wouldn’t involve tattooing, so he’d left his machine back at his workshop near Canal. Today the circumstances dictated a different means of poisoning. But one that could be just as satisfying.

Billy was enjoying a good mood. Oh, with the earlier attacks, he’d felt satisfaction, sure, buzzing the poison into the victims, getting the bloodline just right, angling the careful serifs of the Old English letters.

A Billy Mod …

But that was good in the same way you felt good doing your job or completing chores around the house.

What he was about to do now was a whole different level of good.

Billy slipped out of the park and examined the streets carefully, uptown and cross, noting no one looking at him with suspicion. No police on patrol. He continued his journey south toward his target.

Yes, this attack would be different.

For one thing, there was no message to send. He’d simply deliver the tremetol. No scars, no tats, no mods.

Also, he was not interested in killing the victim. That death would ultimately be detrimental to the Modification. No, he was going to wield the poison to debilitate.

Though it would be a very different life that his target would live in the future; perhaps the most disturbing symptoms of non-lethal white snakeroot poisoning were delirium and dementia. The man he was going to poison in a few moments would stay alive but become a raving madman for a long, long time.

Billy nonetheless had one regret: that his victim would be incapable of feeling the searing, unbearable nausea and gut pain that white snakeroot’s toxin caused. Lincoln Rhyme was numb to sensation below his neck. The vomiting, tremors and other symptoms would be unpleasant but not as horrific as in a person who had a fully functioning nervous system.

Billy now turned west down a cross street and entered a brightly lit Chinese restaurant, which was filled with the smells of garlic and hot oil. He made his way to the restroom, where, in a stall, he lost the hat and overcoat and dressed in coveralls.

Outside once more — unnoticed by diners or staff, he observed — Billy walked across the street and into the service alley that would lead to the back of Rhyme’s apartment.

The cul-de-sac was pungent — smelled a bit like the Chinese restaurant, now that he thought about it — but relatively clean. The ground was ancient cobblestones and patches of asphalt, dotted with slush and ice. Several Dumpsters sat well-ordered against brick walls. It seemed that several town houses, including Rhyme’s, and a larger apartment building backed onto this area.

Noting a video camera at the rear of Rhyme’s town house, he went about his faux business of checking electrical lines.

Ducking behind a Dumpster, as if searching for a troublesome bit of electrical wire conduit, Billy circumvented the camera and approached the door. He extracted the hypodermic that contained the snakeroot toxin from his toothbrush holder and slipped the syringe into his pocket.

Tremetol, a clear liquid, is an alcohol and would blend instantly with what Billy’s research had revealed was Rhyme’s favorite beverage — single-malt scotch. It would also be tasteless.

Billy’s palms sweated. His heart thudded.

For all he knew there might be ten armed officers inside, meeting with Rhyme at the moment. The alarm wouldn’t be on, not during the day, but he could easily be spotted lacing the bottle.

And possibly shot on the spot.

But the Modification, naturally, involved risk. What important missions didn’t? So, get on with it. Billy pulled out his phone, a prepaid model, untraceable, and pressed in a number.

Almost immediately he heard, ‘Police and fire. What’s your emergency?’

‘A man with a gun in Central Park! He’s attacking a woman.’

‘Where are you, sir?’

‘He’s got a gun! I think he’s going to rape her!’

‘Yes, sir. Where are you? Where exactly?’

‘Central Park West, about … I don’t know. It’s … uhm, okay, in front of Three Fifty Central Park West.’

‘Is anyone hurt?’

‘I think so! Jesus! Please. Send somebody.’

‘Describe him.’

‘Dark-skinned. Thirties.’

‘What’s your name—?’

Click.

It was sixty seconds later that he heard the sirens. He knew the 20th Precinct, located in Central Park, was nearby.

More sirens.

Dozens of squad cars, he guessed.

He waited until the sirens grew louder; they’d have to be drawing the attention of everyone in the town house. Gambling that no one could see the security monitor, Billy walked matter-of-factly to Rhyme’s back door. Paused again. He looked around. Nobody. He turned to the lock.

Later, the police might look at the security tape — if it was recorded at all — and see the intruder. But all they’d see would be a vague form, head down.

And by then it would be too late.

CHAPTER 45

‘The hell is going on?’ Rhyme barked.

The criminalist and Mel Cooper were in the front hallway of the town house, the door open. Ron Pulaski joined them. They were peering out into the street, which was filled with police cars, two ESU vans and two ambulances.

Blue lights, white, red. Flashing urgently.

Cooper’s and Pulaski’s hands were near their sidearms.

Thom was upstairs, probably observing from a bedroom window.

Five minutes ago Rhyme had heard frantic wails grow loud as emergency vehicles streaked along the street outside. He’d expected them to continue on Central Park West, but they didn’t. The vehicles braked to a stop just one door north. The piercing howls remained at peak pitch for a moment then one by one shut off.

Peering outside, Rhyme said, ‘Call downtown, Mel. Find out.’

He’d assumed at first that the incident had something to do with him — maybe the unsub had been making a frontal assault on the town house — but then he noted that the attention was focused on the park itself and that none of the officers who were part of the operation approached his place.

Cooper had a conversation with someone at Dispatch and then disconnected.

‘Assault in the park. Dark-skinned male, thirties. Maybe attempted rape.’

‘Ah.’ They continued to watch for another three or four minutes. Rhyme examined the park. It was hard to see anything through the mist and reinvigorated sleet. A rape? The urge for sex is more impulsive than that for money and more intense, he knew, but in this weather?

He wondered if he’d draw the crime scene side of the case and was thinking that given the icy rain the evidence would be a challenge.

But that put in mind Lon Sellitto, who would normally be the NYPD representative who’d contact him about potential jobs. The detective was still in the most intensive of intensive care wards, nowhere near consciousness.

Rhyme put the rape, or attempted rape, out of his mind. He, Pulaski and Cooper returned to the parlor laboratory, where they’d been analyzing the evidence Detective Cheyenne Edwards had delivered — the finds from the crime scene at Pam Willoughby’s.

There hadn’t been much, though the unsub had left in such a hurry that he’d neglected to pick up the hypodermic needle he’d stabbed Seth with and a vial of the poison he’d presumably been about to use on the young man. The substance was from the white baneberry plant — also called doll’s eyes, because the berries resemble eyeballs. Eerie. The toxin, Cooper explained, was cardiogenic; it basically stopped the heart. Of all the poisons their unsub was using this was the most humane, killing without the pain of toxins that attacked the GI and renal systems.

Rhyme noticed Ron Pulaski looking down at his phone. His face was lit with a faint blue glow.

Checking messages or the time? Rhyme wondered. Mobiles were used as watches more and more frequently nowadays.

Pulaski hung up and said to Rhyme, ‘I should go.’

So, time. Not texts.

Ron Pulaski’s undercover assignment at the funeral home was about to begin: to see who was collecting the Watchmaker’s remains and maybe, just maybe learn a bit more about the enigmatic criminal.

‘You all set, you ready to be Serpico, you ready to be Gielgud?’

‘Was he a cop? And, wait, didn’t Serpico get shot in the face?’

Rhyme and Pulaski had spent some time that morning on a cover story that would seem credible to the funeral home director and whoever was coming to collect the man’s remains.

Rhyme had never done undercover work but he knew the rules: Less is more and more is less. Meaning you research the hell out of your role, learn every possible fact, but when you present yourself to the perp, you offer up only the minimal. Inundating the bad guys with details is a sure giveaway.

So he and Pulaski had come up with a bio for Stan Walesa, a bio that would have made credible some connection with the Watchmaker. Rhyme had noted him walking around the lab all day, reciting facts they’d made up. ‘Born in Brooklyn, has an import-export company, investigated for insider trading, questioned in connection with a banking scam, divorced, knows weapons, was hired by an associate of the Watchmaker to transport some containers overseas, no, I can’t give his name away, no, I don’t know what was in the containers. Again: Born in Brooklyn, has an import-export …’

Now, as Pulaski pulled on his coat, Rhyme said, ‘Look, rookie, don’t think about the fact that this is our only chance to fill in gaps on the late Watchmaker’s biography.’

‘Um, okay.’

‘And if you mess up, we’ll never have this opportunity again. Don’t think about that. Put it out of your mind.’

‘I …’ The patrolman’s face relaxed. ‘You’re fucking with me, aren’t you, Lincoln?’

Rhyme smiled. ‘You’ll do great.’

Pulaski chuckled and disappeared into the hallway. His exit was announced a moment later by a blast of wind through the open door. The latch clicked; then silence.

Rhyme turned to look at the containers of evidence that Detective Edwards had collected at Pam’s apartment, following the unsub’s attack on Seth. But he focused past the bags.

Well, what was this?

A miracle had occurred.

He was looking at the shelves that contained forensic books, a stack of professional journals, a density gradient instrument and … his single-malt scotch. The bottle of Glenmorangie had been placed within reach. Thom usually stashed it higher on the shelf — out of Rhyme’s grasp, the way you’d keep candy away from a child, which pissed Rhyme off to no end.

But apparently the old mother hen had been distracted and screwed up.

He resisted temptation for the time being and maneuvered back to the evidence from Pam’s apartment and the storeroom in the basement and Seth’s clothing laid out on an examination table. For a half hour he and Cooper went through the finds — which weren’t many. No friction ridges, of course, a few fibers, a hair or two, though they might have been Pam’s or they might have come from a friend of hers. Or even from Amelia Sachs, who had been a frequent visitor. There was trace, but it was mostly trace identical to that of the earlier scenes. Only one new substance was discovered: some fibers on Seth’s shirt, where the unsub had grabbed him. They were from an architectural or engineering blueprint. They had to come from 11-5, since Seth wouldn’t use such diagrams in his work as an ad agency freelancer. And Pam would have no reason to come in contact with such plans either.

Mel Cooper filled a new evidence chart, which included the trace, the syringe, the pictures of the scene, the booty footprints.

Rhyme glanced at the sparse info, displeased. No insights.

He circled away and headed for the shelf, thinking of the peaty smell and taste of the whisky, tangy but not too smoky.

With another glance toward the kitchen, where Thom was laboring away, and toward Cooper, securing evidence from the scene. Rhyme easily picked the bottle off the shelf and deposited it between his legs. He was clumsier with the crystal glass, lifting that — careful, careful — and setting it on the shelf within pouring distance.

Then he returned to the bottle and, with careful manipulation, he eased out the cork and poured into the glass.

One finger, two fingers, all right, three.

It had been a difficult day.

The bottle landed safely where it had been and he turned the chair around and returned to the center of the lab.

‘I didn’t see a thing,’ Cooper said, his back to Rhyme.

‘Nobody believes witnesses anyway, Mel.’ He eased up to the evidence chart and stopped.

Not spilling a drop.

CHAPTER 46

Amelia Sachs was sitting at a coffee shop in Midtown, one of those traditional delis you see fewer and fewer of, dying off in favor of corporate franchises with faux foreign names. Here, stained menus, Mediterranean staff, unsteady chairs — and the best comfort food for miles around.

Fidgety. She dug a thumbnail into a finger, avoided blood. Bad habits. Unstoppable. Some things Sachs could control. Other things, not.

And stopping Pam’s sojourn with Seth?

Sachs had left two messages for the girl — her limit, she decided — but had called once more and on the third ring Pam had picked up. Sachs had asked how Seth was doing after the attack: ‘The doctors at the hospital said he’s okay. He wasn’t even admitted.’

Apparently he wasn’t as mad as earlier; at least they were talking.

‘And you?’

‘Fine.’

Quiet, once again.

Sachs had taken a figurative breath and asked if they could meet for coffee.

Pam had hesitated but then agreed, adding she had to be at work anyway. Suggesting this deli, which was across the street from the theater.

Sachs now toyed with her phone to keep from digging into flesh.

The Skin Collector …

What could she say to Pam to convince the girl not to quit school and go on the worldwide tour.

Well, wait. You can’t think of her that way. Girl. Of course not. She was nineteen. She’d lived through kidnapping and attempted murder. She’d defied militiamen. She had the right to make decisions and the right to make mistakes.

And, Sachs asked herself, was her decision a mistake at all?

Who was she to say?

Look at her own romantic history. High school for her was, as for everybody, a time of exploration and exhilarating fumbling and false starts. Then she had hit the professional world of fashion. A tall, gorgeous model, Sachs had had to take the repel-all-boarders approach. Which was a shame because some of the men she’d met on photo shoots and at ad agency planning sessions had probably been pretty nice. But they were lost among the vast number of players. Easier to say no to everyone, slip into her garage and tune engines or go to the race track and work on lap times with her Camaro SS.

After joining the NYPD, things hadn’t got much better. Tired of the relentless pressure to go out, the filthy jokes, the juvenile looks and attitudes offered up by fellow cops, she’d continued to be a recluse. Ah, that was the answer, the male officers understood, after she’d rejected their overtures. She was a dyke. Such a pretty one too. Fucking waste.

Then she’d met Nick. The first real love, true love, consuming love, complete love. Whatever tired adjective you wanted.

And, with Nick, it’d turned out to be betrayed love, too.

Not of the daily variety, no. But, to Sachs, perhaps worse. Nick had been a corrupt cop. And a corrupt cop who hurt people.

Meeting Lincoln Rhyme had saved her. Professionally and personally. Though that relationship was obviously alternative, as well.

No, Sachs’s history and experience hardly qualified her to preach to Pam. Yet, like driving slowly, or hesitating before kicking in a door during a dynamic entry, Sachs was unable to stop herself from giving her opinion.

If the girl … the young woman showed up at all.

Which finally she did, fifteen minutes late.

Sachs said nothing about the tardiness, just rose and gave her a hug. It wasn’t exactly rejected but Sachs could feel the stiffness rise to Pam’s shoulders. She noted too that the young woman wasn’t taking off her coat. She just tugged her stocking cap off and tossed her hair. The gloves too. But the message was: This’ll be short. Whatever your agenda.

And no smiles. Pam had a beautiful smile and Sachs loved it when the girl’s face curled into a spontaneous crescent. But not here, not today.

‘How’re the Olivettis?’

‘Good. Howard got the kids a new dog for Jackson to play with. Marjorie lost ten pounds.’

‘I know she was trying. Hard.’

‘Yeah.’ Pam scanned a menu. Sachs knew she wasn’t going to order anything. ‘Is Lon doing okay?’

‘Still critical. Unconscious.’

‘Man, that’s bad,’ Pam said. ‘I’ll call Rachel.’

‘She’d like that.’

The young woman looked up. ‘Look, Amelia. There’s something I want to say.’

Was this going to be good or bad?

‘I’m sorry what I said, about you and my mother. That wasn’t fair.’

Sachs in fact hadn’t taken the comment particularly hard. It was clearly one of those weaponized sentences that get flung out to hurt, to end conversations.

She held up a hand. ‘No, that’s okay. You were mad.’

The woman’s nod told Sachs that, yes, she’d been mad. And her eyes revealed that she still was, despite the apology.

Around them couples and families, parents with children of all ages, bundled in winter sweaters and flannel, sat over coffee and cocoa and soup and grilled cheese sandwiches and chatted or laughed and whispered. It all seemed so normal. And so very far away from the drama of the table she and Pam sat at.

‘But I have to tell you, Amelia. Nothing’s changed. We’re leaving in a month.’

‘A month?’

‘The semester.’ Pam wasn’t going to be drawn into a debate beyond that. ‘Amelia. Please. This is good, what we’re doing. I’m happy.’

‘And I want to make sure you stay that way.’

‘Well, we’re doing it. We’re leaving. India first, we’ve decided.’

Sachs didn’t even know if Pam had a passport. ‘Look.’ She lifted her hands. The gesture smelled of desperation and she lowered them. ‘Are you sure you want to … disrupt your life like that? I really don’t think you should.’

‘You can’t tell me what to do.’

‘I’m not telling you what to do. But I can give advice to somebody I love.’

‘And I can reject it.’ A cool sigh. ‘I think it’s better if we don’t talk for a while. This is all … I’m upset. And it’s pretty clear that I’m pissing you off totally.’

‘No. Not at all.’ She started to reach for the girl’s hand but Pam had anticipated her and withdrew it. ‘I’m worried about you.’

‘You don’t need to be.’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘Because to you I’m a child.’

Well, if you’re fucking acting like one.

But Sachs held back for a moment. Then thought: Knuckle time.

‘You had a very hard time growing up. You’re … vulnerable. I don’t know how else to put it.’

‘Oh, that again. Naive?. A fool.’

‘Of course not. But it was a hard time.’

After they’d escaped from New York following the terrorist plot Pam’s mother had orchestrated, the two of them had gone underground in a small community of militiamen and ‘their women’ in Larchwood, Missouri, northwest of St Louis. The girl’s life had been hell — indoctrination into white supremacist politics and bare-butt whippings in public for being disrespectful. While militia homeschooled boys learned farming, real estate and construction, Pammy, as a girl, could look forward to mastering only cooking and sewing and homeschooling.

She’d spent her formative years there, miserable but also resolute in defying the ultra-right, fundamentalist militia community. At middle school age she’d sneak out of the enclave to buy ‘demonic’ Harry Potter books and Lord of the Rings and the New York Times. And she wouldn’t put up with what many of the other girls were expected to. (When one of the lay ministers tried to touch her chest to see if ‘yer heart’s beatin’ for Jesus’, Pam delivered a silent ‘hands off’ in the form of a deep slash to his forearm with a box cutter, which she still often carried.)

‘I told you, that’s in the past. It’s over. It doesn’t matter.’

‘It does matter, Pam. Those were very hard years for you. They affected you — in ways you don’t even know. It’ll take time to work through all that. And you need to tell Seth everything about your time underground.’

‘No, I don’t. I don’t need to do anything.’

Sachs said evenly, ‘I think you’re jumping at the first chance for a normal relationship that’s come along. And you’re hungry for that. I understand.’

‘You understand. That sounds condescending. And you make me sound desperate. I told you, I’m not getting married. I’m not having his baby. I want to travel with a guy I love. What’s the big fucking deal?’

This was going so wrong. How did I lose control? This was the same conversation they’d had the other day. Except that the tone was darker.

Pam pulled her hat back on. Started to rise.

‘Please. Just wait a minute.’ Sachs’s mind was racing. ‘Let me say one more thing. Please.’

Impatient, Pam dropped back into her seat. A waitress came by. She waved the woman away.

Sachs said, ‘Could we—?’

But she never got to finish her plea to the teenager, for just then her phone hummed. It was a text from Mel Cooper. He was asking her to get to Rhyme’s town house as soon as she could.

Actually, she noted, the message wasn’t a request at all.

It never really is when the word ‘emergency’ figures in the header.

CHAPTER 47

Upon examining the back door to Rhyme’s town house, a gowned and gloved Amelia Sachs decided: The son of a bitch sure can pick locks.

Unsub 11-5 hadn’t left more than a minute scratch when he’d broken into the town house to doctor a bottle of scotch on Rhyme’s shelf — insidiously leaving it within the wheelchair-bound criminalist’s reach. Sachs wasn’t surprised the unsub had some skill at breaking and entering; his talent at skin art attested to his dexterity.

The sleet spattered and the wind blew. By now any evidence in the cul-de-sac and around the back door had probably been obliterated. Inside the door, where footprints would have been visible, she discovered nothing other than marks left by his booties.

The strategy behind the assault was now clear: 11-5 had called in a false alarm — an attempted rape in Central Park, near the town house. When Rhyme and the others inside went to the front door to see what was going on, the unsub had snuck through the back and found an open bottle of whisky, poured some poison inside, then escaped silently.

Sachs walked the grid on the route from the back door up the stairs, through the hall from the kitchen to the parlor. Rhyme had an alarm system, which was turned off when the town house was occupied, as now. Video cameras covered the front and back doors but they were real-time monitoring only; the images weren’t recorded.

A sense of violation filled Sachs. Somebody had breached the castle, somebody stealthy and adroit. And deadly. Thom had already arranged for the locks to be changed and a drop bar put on both doors but once someone has intruded into your living area, you’re never completely free from the taint of desecration. And from worry that it might happen again.

Finally she arrived at the main floor and handed the bagged trace off to Mel Cooper.

Lincoln Rhyme turned his Merits wheelchair around from the table where he’d been reviewing evidence and asked, ‘Well? Anything?’

‘Not much,’ Sachs told him. ‘Not much at all.’

Rhyme wasn’t surprised.

Not with Unsub 11-5.

Sachs looked him over carefully, as if he’d actually sipped some of the poisoned whisky.

Or maybe she was just troubled that the unsub had gotten inside, spiked the bottle and gotten out without anybody’s knowing.

Lord knew Rhyme himself was. Actually more pissed off than troubled — because he hadn’t deduced that the whisky was tainted, even though, looking back, he should have. It was obvious that Thom would never leave a nearly full bottle of forty-proof liquor within his boss’s reach. Combine that with the facts that Lon Sellitto and Seth McGuinn had been attacked and that a police action had unfolded right outside his town house, a perfect diversion, and, yeah, Rhyme should have guessed.

But, on the contrary, the salvation had come from a call to 911. A passerby on the cross street had seen someone slip into the service area behind Rhyme’s and pocket a hypodermic. ‘Looking suspicious,’ the Good Samaritan had reported. ‘A drug thing, maybe going to break in, you know.’

The dispatcher had called Rhyme, who understood immediately that the mis-shelved Glenmorangie was Snow White’s apple.

He’d glanced at the glass in his hands and realized that he’d come an instant away from a very unpleasant demise, though less unpleasant to him than to others, given that most of his body would not have felt the excruciating pain the poison causes.

But he’d tucked this shadow of mortality away because he was a man for whom death had been an easy option — voluntary and otherwise — for years. His condition, quadriplegia, brought with it many accessories that could dump him into a coffin at a moment’s notice: dysreflexia and sepsis, for instance.

So, an attempted poisoning? Good news, as far as he was concerned. It might reveal new evidence to lead them a bit closer to the man who was the spiritual heir to the Bone Collector.

CHAPTER 48

Something was up.

Ron Pulaski had been told that there was no memorial service planned for Richard Logan.

But apparently that had changed.

Six people stood in the room he’d been directed to in the Berkowitz Funeral Home, Broadway and 96th.

He hadn’t gone inside yet. The patrol officer stood in the hallway, off to the side, peering in. He was thinking: Tough to blend comfortably when you’re a stranger facing a half-dozen people who know each other — one or all of whom might have a very good incentive to suspect you’re an intruder and shoot you dead.

And the name of the place! Wasn’t Berkowitz the Son of Sam? That serial killer from the 1970s or ’80s?

Bad sign.

Even though Ron Pulaski tried hard to be like Lincoln Rhyme and not believe in signs or superstitions, he kind of did.

He started forward. Stopped.

Pulaski had been spending a lot of nerves on the idea that he was going undercover. He was a street cop, a beat cop — he and his twin brother, also blue, used to say. He was thinking of bad hip-hop riff the bros threw together.

A beat cop, a street cop, write you up a ticket and send you on your way.

Or let your know your rights and put your ass away …

In Rikers, the island, in the bay.

He knew next to nothing about the art of sets and covert work — so brilliantly played by people like Fred Dellray, the tall, lean African American FBI agent who could be anyone from a Caribbean drug dealer to a Charles Taylor — style warlord to a Fortune 50 °CEO.

Man was a born actor. Voices, postures, expressions … everything. And apparently this Gielgud guy too (maybe Dellray worked with him). And Serpico. Even if he got shot.

Beat cop, street cop, walking through the sleet cop …

The rap riff skipped through his head, somehow stilling the uneasiness.

Why’re you so damn nervous?

Not like he was having to pass with druggies or gangbangers. Richard Logan’s family or friends, whoever these visitors were, seemed like your average law-abiding Manhattanites. The Watchmaker had moved in a different circle, a higher level than most criminals. Oh, he’d been guilty of murder. But it was impossible to picture Logan, the Watchmaker, the sophisticate, in a crack house or in the double-wide of a meth cooker. Fine restaurants, chess matches, museums had been more his thing. Still, he was aware that the Watchmaker had tried to kill Rhyme the last time they’d met. Maybe he’d left instructions in his will for a hit man associate of his to do just what Pulaski was doing at the moment: hang out in the funeral home, identify any nervous undercover cops, drag ’em into the alley afterward.

All right. Jesus. Get real.

There is a risk, he reflected, but not a bullet in the back of the head. It’s that you’ll fuck up and disappoint Lincoln and Amelia.

That damn uncertainty, the questioning. They never go away. Not completely.

At least he thought he looked the part. Black suit, white shirt, narrow tie. (He’d almost worn his dress NYPD tie but decided: Are you out of your fucking mind? It didn’t have little badges on it but one of these people might’ve known cops in the past. Be smart.) He had scruffed up, per Lincoln Rhyme’s request. A one-day growth of beard (a bit pathetic since you had to get close to see the blond stubble), shirt stained, shoes scuffed. And he’d been practicing his cold stare.

Inscrutable, dangerous.

Pulaski peeked inside the memorial service room again. The walls were painted dark green and lined with chairs, enough for forty, fifty people. In the center was a table, draped in a purple cloth; a simple urn sat on it. The visitors were four men, ranging in age from late forties up to their seventies, he judged. Two women seemed to be spouses or partners of two of the men. Wardrobe was what you’d expect — dark suits and dresses, conservative.

It was odd. He’d been told there was no viewing or service. Just someone to collect the remains.

Yeah, suspicious. Was it a setup?

Bullet in the head?

On the other hand, if it was legit, if plans had changed and it was an impromptu service for the Watchmaker, this’d be a real coup. Surely somebody here had known Richard Logan well and could be a source of info about the dead mastermind.

Okay, just go ahead and dive in.

Street cop, beat cop, goin’ to a funeral in the sleet cop.

He walked up to one of the mourners, an elderly man in a dark suit.

‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Stan Walesa.’ He’d rehearsed saying, and responding to, the name over and over (he’d had Jenny call him by it all last night), so he wouldn’t ignore somebody’s calling him ‘Stan’ during the set. Or, even worse, glance behind him when somebody did.

The man identified himself — Logan was not part of his name — and introduced Pulaski to one of the women and another man. He struggled to memorize their names, then reminded himself to take a picture of the guest list with his cell phone later.

‘How did you know him?’ A nod toward the urn.

‘We worked together,’ Pulaski said.

Blinks from everybody.

‘A few years ago.’

A frown from one of the younger men. Right out of The Sopranos. ‘You worked together?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Closely?’

Be tough. ‘Yeah. Pretty close.’ His gaze said, What’s it to you?

Pulaski recalled everything he could about the crimes that the Watchmaker had run. His plan wasn’t to claim outright that he’d been a partner but to suggest that he’d had some mysterious dealings — to whet the appetite of anyone who might want to get a piece of the Watchmaker’s ongoing projects after his death.

Containers, shipments, insider trading …

Less is more, more is less.

People fell silent. Pulaski realized that classical music was streaming from invisible speakers. He hadn’t heard it earlier.

To get the conversation going Pulaski said, ‘So sad.’

‘A blessing, though,’ one woman offered.

Blessing, Pulaski reflected. He supposed that, yes, rather than spend most of your life in prison, a fast, relatively painless death was a blessing.

Pulaski continued, ‘A couple years ago, we were working, he seemed healthy.’ He could actually picture Logan from that time. He had seemed healthy.

Those present exchanged glances once more.

‘And so young,’ the undercover cop added.

Something was wrong. But the oldest one of the mourners leaned close and touched Pulaski’s arm. A smile. ‘To me, yes, he was young.’

The visitors eased away. One, he noticed, had left the room.

To get his gun?

This isn’t going well. He turned back to the older man but before he could speak another voice intruded. Soft but firm. ‘Excuse me, sir.’

Pulaski turned to find a large man, in a dark suit, looking him over closely. He had silver hair and dark-framed glasses. ‘Could I speak to you for a moment?’

‘Me?’

‘You.’

The man extended his hand — a very large, calloused hand — but not to shake. He pointed and directed Pulaski out of the room and up the hallway to the left.

‘Sir,’ the man said, ‘you are?’

‘Stan Walesa.’ He had a cheap ID that he’d hacked together himself.

But the man didn’t ask for any identification. His eyes boring into Pulaski’s, he rasped, ‘Mr Walesa. You know some people occasionally come to services in hopes of getting something.’

‘Getting something?’

‘It ranges from food at the reception afterward to selling insurance or financial programs. Attorneys too.’

‘That a fact?’

‘It is.’

Pulaski remembered he was supposed to be playing the tough guy. Instead of looking nervous and saying that was terrible, he snapped, ‘What’s that got to do with me? Who are you?’

‘I’m Jason Berkowitz. Associate director. The family in there thought your behavior was a little suspicious. You were claiming to know the deceased.’

‘What’s suspicious? I did know him.’

‘You claim you worked with him.’

‘Not claimed. I did.’ Pulaski’s heart was pounding so hard he was sure the man could hear it. But he struggled to play the wise guy.

‘You don’t seem like the sort who’d work with Mr Ardell.’

‘Who?’

‘Blake Ardell.’

‘And who’s that supposed to be.’

‘Not supposed to be. He is, was, the man whose service you’re crashing.’

‘Crashing? What the hell does that mean? I’m here about Richard Logan.’

The assistant director blinked. ‘Mr Logan? Oh. My. I’m so sorry, sir. That’s Serenity.’

‘Serenity?’

‘The name of the room across the hall. This room is Peace, Mr Ardell’s service.’

Goddamn. Pulaski thought back. The fellow at the front door had told him to turn right. He’d turned left.

Shit, shit, shit. Fucking head injury. If this’d been a drug set, he might be dead now.

Think smarter.

But act the part. ‘One of your people, I don’t remember who, sent me to that room.’

‘I’m so sorry. Please accept our apologies. Our fault entirely.’

‘And names? I’ve never heard of naming rooms in a funeral parlor. You ought to have numbers.’

‘Yessir, it’s a little unusual. I’m sorry. I do apologize.’

‘Oh, all right.’ Pulaski grimaced. He nodded back. Then paused, recalling the curious expression on the faces of the mourners when he’d mentioned working with the deceased.

‘One question. You said I didn’t seem like the sort who worked with this Ardell. What’d he do for a living?’

‘He was an adult film star in the seventies,’ Berkowitz whispered. ‘Gay. The family doesn’t like to talk about it.’

‘I’d guess not.’

‘That’s the room with Mr Logan’s remains.’ He pointed to a small doorway.

Serenity …

Pulaski stepped through it and into a small room, twenty by twenty. There were a few chairs, a coffee table, innocuous landscapes covering the walls. Also a bouquet of subdued white flowers. And on a velvet-draped table, similar to the one holding the urn of late porn star, sat a brown cardboard box. This would, Pulaski knew, be the Watchmaker’s remains. Beside it stood a round, balding man in a dark business suit. He was making a mobile phone call. He looked at Pulaski briefly, with curiosity, and turned away. He seemed to speak more softly. Finally he disconnected.

Inhaling a steadying breath, Pulaski walked up to him. He nodded.

The man said nothing.

Pulaski looked him up and down — keep it blunt, keep it tough. ‘You were a friend of Richard’s?’

‘And you are—?’ the man asked in a soft baritone, with the hint of a Southern accent.

‘Stan Walesa,’ Pulaski said. The name almost seemed natural at this point. ‘I was asking, you’re a friend of Richard’s?’

‘I don’t know who you are and I don’t know why you’re asking.’

‘Okay, I worked with Richard. Off and on. I heard he was being cremated this morning and I assumed there’d be a service.’

‘Worked with Richard,’ the man repeated, looking the officer up and down. ‘Well, there is no service. I’ve been retained to bring his remains back home.’

Pulaski frowned. ‘A lawyer.’

‘That’s right. Dave Weller.’ No hands were proffered.

Pulaski kept up the offensive. ‘I don’t remember you from the trial.’

‘Mr Logan was not my client. I’ve never met him.’

‘Just taking the ashes back home?’

‘Like I said.’

‘That’s California, right?’

The only response was: ‘What are you doing here, Mr Walesa?’

‘Paying respects.’ He stepped closer to the box. ‘No urn?’

‘Not much point,’ Weller said. ‘Richard wanted his ashes scattered.’

‘Where?’

‘Did you send those?’

Pulaski looked at the bouquet, which Weller was nodding at. The officer tried to looks somewhat, but not overly, confused. ‘No.’ He stepped to the vase and read at the card. He gave a bitter laugh.

Inscrutable.

He said, ‘That’s pretty low.’

Weller asked, ‘How do you mean?’

‘You know who that is, who sent them?’

‘I read the card when I got here. But I don’t know the name. Lincoln Rhyme?’

‘You don’t know Rhyme?’ Lowering his voice: ‘He’s the son of a bitch who put my friend in prison.’

Weller asked, ‘Police?’

‘Works with the police.’

‘Why would he send flowers?’

‘I think he’s gloating.’

‘Well, that was a waste of money. Richard’s hardly going to be offended now, is he?’ A glance at the box of ashes.

Silence.

How to behave now? Man, this acting stuff was exhausting. He decided to shake his head at the unfairness of the world. He looked down. ‘Such a shame, really. When I talked to him last, he was fine. Or at least he didn’t mention anything, like chest pains.’

Weller now focused. ‘Talked to him?’

‘Right.’

‘This was recently?’

‘Yeah. In prison.’

‘You’re here alone?’ Weller asked.

A nod. Pulaski asked the same question.

‘That’s right.’

‘So there’s no funeral?’

‘The family hasn’t decided.’ Weller looked Pulaski up and down carefully.

Okay, time to go with the less …

‘Well, so long, Mr Weller. Tell his family, or whoever your clients are, I’m sorry for their loss. I’ll miss him too. He was an … interesting man.’

‘Like I said, I never met him.’

Pulaski pulled on dark cotton gloves. ‘So long.’

Weller nodded.

Pulaski was at the door when the lawyer said, ‘Why did you really come here, Mr Walesa?’

The young officer stopped. He turned back. ‘“Reall”Y? What’s that supposed to mean?’

De Niro tough. Tony Soprano tough.

‘There was never going to be a memorial service. If you’d called to see when I was picking up the remains — which you did, since here you are — you would have learned there was no service. So. What do I make of that?’

Pulaski debated — and made a show of debating. He dug into his pocket and produced a business card. Offered it to the man with a gloved hand. He said, ‘Give that to your clients.’

‘Why?’

‘Just give it to them. Or throw it out.’ A shrug. ‘Up to you.’

The lawyer looked at him coolly, then took the card. It had only the fake name and the prepaid mobile number on it.

‘What exactly do you do, Mr Walesa?’

Pulaski’s gaze began at the lawyer’s bald head and ended at his shoes, which were nearly as shiny. ‘Have a good day, Mr Weller.’

And, with an oblique glance at the box containing the Watchmaker’s ashes, Pulaski headed for the door.

Pulaski, thinking: Yes, nailed it!

CHAPTER 49

The unsub, however, had not left as much evidence in the town house as Rhyme had hoped.

And there were no other solid leads.The phone call about the intruder had come from an anonymous source. A canvass of the area, to find witnesses who’d seen the intruder, had yielded nothing. Security video cameras in two nearby stores had recorded a thin man in dark coveralls, walking with his head down and carrying a briefcase. He’d diverted suddenly into the cul-de-sac. No image of his face, of course.

Mel Cooper had run an analysis on the bottle and found, naturally, only Rhyme’s and Thom’s fingerprints, not even those of a liquor store stocker or a Scottish distiller.

No other trace was on the bottle.

Sachs was now telling him, ‘Nothing significant, Rhyme. Except he’s an ace lock picker. No tool marks. Used a pick gun, I’m sure.’

Cooper was checking the contents of the evidence collection bags. ‘Not much, not much.’ A moment later, though, he did make a discovery. ‘Hair.’

‘Excellent,’ Rhyme said. ‘Where?’

Cooper examined Sachs’s notes. ‘It was by the shelf where he spiked the whisky.’

‘And very good whisky it used to be,’ Rhyme muttered. ‘But a hair. Good. Only: Is it his, yours, mine, Thom’s, a deliveryman’s?’

‘Let’s take a look.’ The tech lifted the hair from the tape roller and prepared a slide for visual observation in the optical microscope.

‘There a bulb?’ Rhyme asked.

Hair can yield DNA but generally only if the bulb is attached.

But this sample, no.

Still, hair can reveal other facts about the perp. Tox and drug profiles, for instance (hair retains drug-use info for months). And true hair color, of course.

Cooper focused the microscope and hit the button that put the image on the high-def monitor nearby. The fiber was short, just a bit of stubble.

‘Hell,’ Rhyme said.

‘What?’ Sachs asked.

‘Look familiar, anyone?’

Cooper shook his head. But Sachs gave a soft laugh. ‘Last week.’

‘Exactly.’

The hair hadn’t come from the unsub but from the City Hall murder case of the week before, the worker killed fighting with the mugger. The beard stubble. The victim had shaved just before he’d left the office.

This happened sometimes. However careful you were with evidence, tiny samples escaped. Oh, well.

The mass spectrum computer screen came alive. Cooper focused and said, ‘Got the toxin profile: tremetol. A form of alcohol. Comes from snakeroot. There wasn’t enough to kill you, unless you drank the whole bottle at once.’

‘Don’t tempt me,’ Rhyme said.

‘But it would have made you very, very sick. Severe dementia. Possibly permanent.’

‘Maybe he didn’t have time to inject the whole dosage into the bottle. You know, it’s the dosage that’s deadly, not the substance itself. We all ingest antimony and mercury and arsenic every day. But not in quantities that do us any harm. Hell, water can kill you. Drink enough too quickly and the sodium imbalance can stop your heart.’

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.

‘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.

CHAPTER 50

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.

He pitied them but he felt contempt for these people too.

Billy thought, naturally, of Lovely Girl. But now he wasn’t sad. Everything was going to be all right. He was confident. All would be made right. Full circle.

The Rule of Skin …

He walked a few blocks farther until he came to the storefront. The sign on the door reported Open but there was no one inside, not in the shop itself, though in the back he could see a shadow of movement. He looked over the art and posters and photos in the windows. Superheroes, animals, flags, monsters. Slogans. Rock groups.

A thousand examples of tattoos.

Mostly silly and commercial and pointless. Like TV shows and Madison Avenue advertising. He mentally sneered at the tackiness on display.

How skin art had changed over time, Billy reflected. Inking was, in ancient days, a serious affair. For the first thousand or more years of its existence, tattooing was not primarily about decoration. Until the 1800s body art was ritualistic and bound up with religion and societal structure. Primitive people tattooed themselves for a number of practical reasons: defining class or tribe, for instance, or sucking up to this god or that. The art served another reason too, vital: identification of your soul for entry into the underworld; if you were unmarked in life, you’d be rejected by the gatekeeper and wander the earth after death, weeping for eternity. Inking acted too as a barrier to keep your soul from migrating out of the body (the origin of the chain and barbed-wire body art so common nowadays on biceps and necks). And high on the list of reasons people inked themselves was to open a portal so evil spirits would flee the body, like wasps out an open car window — spirits that would, say, prod them to do something they didn’t want to do.

Taking pleasure from blood, for instance.

The Oleander Room …

His reflections faded as Billy pulled on his jaundiced latex gloves and opened the door, which set off a buzzer.

‘Out in a minute,’ the voice from the back called.

‘No worries.’ Billy looked around the tiny shop. The chairs, the massage-style tables for tramp stamps and shoulders, the machines and tubes and needles. Good stuff. He looked at the pictures of satisfied customers and concluded that, even if most of the works the shop produced were crap, TT Gordon was a talented artist.

Extracting the hypodermic needle filled with propofol from his backpack, Billy flipped the hanging sign on the door to Closed and locked the latch. He made his way toward the shimmery curtain of beads separating the front room from the back.