The Skin Collector

CHAPTER 51

There’s a moment that occurs when you finish a complicated mod and you wonder: Is the work a success? Or have you ruined a perfectly good piece of skin and possibly someone’s life for the foreseeable future?

This is what Billy Haven was thinking as he lay in bed in his workshop off Canal Street this morning. Recalling some of his more complex mods. You’ve just inked the last line (you’re always tempted to keep going but you have to know when to stop). And you set down your Freewire or your American Eagle or your Baltimore Street or Borg and sit back, edgy and nervous, looking over the finished job for the first time.

Initially a work is just an indiscernible mass of blood and Vaseline and, if it’s big, a nonstick bandage or two.

Ah, but underneath, unrecognizable at the moment, is beauty, soon to be revealed.

You hope.

Like Doctor Moreau, unwrapping the bandages of his subjects and finding the successful creation of a beautiful Cat-woman, with almond-shaped eyes and flowing gray Siamese hair. Or a Bird-man, complete with yellow claws and peacock plumage.

The same thing with the Modification. On the surface — to the police, to the citizens of New York paralyzed at the thought of going into basements — the crimes appeared to be a mystery. Some murders, some torture, some curious messages, random locations, random victims, a killer obsessed with skin and poisons.

But underneath: the perfect design. And now it was time to lift off the bloody curtain of bandages and gaze at the Modification in all its glory.

He threw off the sheets and blanket and sat up, glancing again at the front of his thighs.

He had good memories and sad memories, seeing the names. But, after today, he knew the bad ones would fade.

His parents, Lovely Girl.

His watch hummed. He glanced at it. A second vibration soon after.

Billy dressed and spent the next hour scrubbing the workshop: filling trash bags with clothes he’d worn to the sites of the killings, bedclothes, napkins, paper towels, plastic silverware, plates — anything that might be a nest for his DNA or fingerprints.

He carted the bags outside into the chill, sleety morning — his nose stinging with his first breath on the street — and set them on the curb. He waited. Three minutes later the noisy Department of Sanitation truck rolled to a stop and the workers leapt off the back, collecting the garbage along this short, dark street.

He’d noted the exact time the trucks arrived — to make sure that the trash wasn’t on the street for more than a few minutes; he’d learned that the police had the right to go through your garbage on public streets.

With a grind of transmission and sigh of gassy exhaust, the truck vanished. The most incriminating evidence was gone. He’d return later — maybe in a week or so — and set fire to the place to destroy the rest. But for now, this was enough. It was very unlikely the police would find the subterranean lair anytime soon.

With this thought — about the police — he wondered about Lincoln Rhyme. He’d heard nothing about the man getting sick from the poison. Which reminded him that the plan to derail the great anticipator wasn’t as efficient as it might’ve been. But he hadn’t thought of any other way to get the poison into the man’s bloodstream. Whisky seemed the best choice. Maybe something else would have been better.

Still, as he’d considered earlier: There’d been successful battles and unsuccessful ones. But in the war of the Modification, ultimately he’d win.

Billy returned to the apartment and continued packing.

He walked from terrarium to terrarium. Foxglove, hemlock, tobacco, angel’s trumpets. He’d developed a fondness for the plants and the toxins they produced. He flipped through some of the sketches he’d done.

He slipped them away in his backpack, along with the Modification Commandment notebook. Although he’d written at the end of the Commandments an instruction that amounted to: Thou shalt destroy this holy book itself, he couldn’t bring himself to do so. He wasn’t sure where this reluctance to shred the pages came from. Perhaps it was that the Commandments were the means to fix the pain he’d endured because of the loss of Lovely Girl.

Or maybe because it was simply a marvelous work of art, the sentences so carefully written in Billy’s elegant script — as intricate as a ten-color mod on virgin white skin using a dozen different lining needles and six or seven shaders. Too beautiful to hide from the world.

He zipped up his backpack and then walked to the workbench and packed a half-dozen tools and a heavy-duty extension cord into a canvas gear bag. He added a large, sealed thermos. Then pulled on a tan leather jacket and a dark-green Mets cap.

His watch hummed. Then, the second reminder.

Time to make right all the wrongs of this troubled world.

CHAPTER 52

Lincoln Rhyme was back in his parlor.

He’d awakened several times, wrestling with the puzzle of the tattoos. No insights had blossomed. Then he’d fallen back to a sleep filled with dreams as pointless as most were. He was fully awake at six a.m. and summoned Thom for an expedited morning routine.

Pulaski, Cooper and Sachs were back too and they huddled in the parlor, wrestling with the same mysteries that had refused to unravel when the hour hit midnight.

Rhyme heard the buzz of a mobile and looked across the room to see Pulaski pulling his phone from his pocket. It was the prepaid, not his own iPhone, that was humming.

Which meant the undercover operation.

The young man looked down at the screen. And that deer-in-the-headlights look formed. The officer had changed from his funereal outfit but had dressed undercover nonetheless: jeans, a T-shirt and a V-neck sweater, dark blue. Running shoes. Not exactly a Mafia thug attire but better than a Polo shirt and Dockers.

The criminalist said, ‘It’s the lawyer? From the funeral home?’

Pulaski said, ‘Right. Should I let him leave a message?’

‘He won’t. Answer it. Everybody else, quiet!’

For a moment Rhyme thought Pulaski was going to freeze. But the young man’s eyes grew focused and he lifted the phone. For some reason he turned away from the others so he could carry on a more or less private conversation.

Rhyme wanted to hear but he’d delegated the job of finding the deceased Watchmaker’s associates — whether innocent or lethal — to Pulaski and it was no longer Rhyme’s job to micromanage. It wasn’t even his position to tell the officer what to do or how to do it. Rhyme was merely a civilian consultant; Pulaski was the official law enforcer.

After a few minutes Pulaski disconnected and turned back. ‘Weller wants to see me. One of his clients, too.’

Rhyme lifted his eyebrow. That was even better.

‘He’s staying at the Huntington Arms. West Fifty-Sixth.’

Rhyme shook his head. He didn’t know the hotel. But Mel Cooper looked up the place. ‘One of those boutiques on the West Side.’

It was just north of Hell’s Kitchen, that neighborhood of the city — named after a dangerous ’hood in Victorian London — that had at one point been a thug-infested den of crime. Now it was gentrification personified, though occasional blocks of decrepit color remained. The hotel the man described, Cooper explained, was in a block in which were tucked overpriced restaurants and hotels.

Pulaski said, ‘We’re going to meet in a half hour. How should I handle it?’

‘Mel, what’s the layout of the neighborhood and the hotel?’

The tech went to Google Earth on one computer and the New York Department of Buildings on another. In less than sixty seconds he slapped onto the main monitor an overhead view of the street and a blueprint of the hotel itself.

There was an outdoor patio, on 56th, which would have been a great place for surveillance if the weather had been less Arctic, but the meeting would take place inside today.

‘Sachs, can we get a surveillance team in the lobby?’

‘I’ll call. See what I can do.’ After a few minutes on the phone, she said, ‘No time to go through channels. But I pulled some strings at Major Cases. There’ll be two undercovers inside in twenty minutes.’

‘We’ll need a bigger operation in place, Pulaski. You’ve got to buy time. A couple of days. What did he sound like? Did he make it seem urgent?’

Running a hand through his blond hair, the officer said, ‘Not really. He’s got an idea he wants to pitch, I got the impression. He told me not to park in front of the hotel if I was driving. He was pretty, you know, mysterious. Wasn’t going to say anything on the phone.’

Rhyme looked him over. ‘You have an ankle holster?’

‘Ankle — oh, for a backup piece? I don’t even own one.’

‘Not for backup. Your only piece. You may be frisked. And most friskers stop at the thigh. Sachs?’

Sachs said, ‘I’ll hook him up. A Smith and Wesson Bodyguard. A three eighty. It’s got a laser built in but don’t bother with that. Use the iron sights.’ She dug into a drawer and handed him a small, black automatic. ‘I put nail polish on the sights. Easier to seat a target in bad light. You okay with fiery pink?’

‘I can cope.’

She handed him a small cloth holster with a buckling leather strap. Rhyme recalled she never liked Velcro to secure her weapons. Amelia Sachs left very little to chance.

Pulaski lifted his foot onto a nearby chair and strapped on the holster. It was invisible. Then the officer examined the small, boxy gun. He chambered a round, took another bullet from Sachs and loaded it into the magazine. Six in the hallway, one in the bedroom. He snapped the mag back in.

‘What’s the pull?’

‘It’s heavy. Nine pounds.’

‘Nine. Well.’

‘And double-action only. Your finger’s almost all the way back before it fires. But it’s small as a minnow. Leave the safety off. I don’t even know why they added one. With a pull like that.’

‘Got it.’

Pulaski looked at his watch. ‘I’ve got twenty-five minutes. No time for a wire.’

‘No, there isn’t,’ Rhyme agreed. ‘But the surveillance team’ll have microphones up. You want body armor?’

Shaking his head. ‘They’ll spot that faster than a piece. No, I’ll go in clean.’

‘You sure?’ Sachs asked. ‘Entirely up to you.’

‘I’m sure.’

‘You need to draw them out, rookie. Tell them you want to meet again. Act coy and cautious but insist. Even if it’s in a different state. We’ll get Fred Dellray involved. Federal backup. They do spying right. And don’t go anywhere with them now. We won’t be able to keep tabs on you.’

Pulaski nodded. He walked into the hallway and looked at himself in the mirror. He mussed his hair a bit. ‘Am I inscrutable enough?’

Rhyme said, ‘You are the epitome of unscrupulousness.’

‘Dangerous too,’ Mel Cooper said.

The officer smiled and pulled on his overcoat then disappeared into the front hallway of the town house.

The criminalist called, ‘Keep us posted.’

As he heard the door open to the howling wind, Rhyme asked himself, And what kind of pointless request was that?

CHAPTER 53

You can do this.

Ron Pulaski was minding his steps on the sidewalk in the West 50s, which was encrusted with gray snow and grayer ice. His breath popped out as wispy clouds in the relentlessly cold air and he realized he was having trouble feeling his fingers.

A trigger pull of nine pounds? Thinking of the Smittie Bodyguard pistol on his ankle. His standard weapon, a Glock 17, had a pull of one-third that. Of course, the issue wasn’t the effort to pull the trigger. Nine pounds of effort were easily handled by anybody over the age of six. The problem was accuracy. The harder to pull the trigger, the less accurate the shot.

But it wasn’t going to come to a shootout, Pulaski reminded himself. And even if it did, the backup team would be positioned in the hotel, ready to, well, back him up.

He was— Jesus! The street spun. He nearly ended up on his ass, thanks to a patch of ice he hadn’t seen, inhaling hard in surprise, taking in air so cold it burned.

Hate winter.

Then reminded himself it wasn’t even winter yet, only the sinkhole of an autumn.

He looked up, through the sleet. Three blocks away — long blocks, crosstown blocks — he could see the hotel. A red neon disk, part of the logo.

He increased his pace. Just a couple of days ago, he and Jenny and the kids had spent the night in front of the fireplace because there’d been a problem with the gas line for the block. The cold had seeped in and he’d gotten a fire going, real logs, not Duraflames, the kids in PJs and sleeping bags nearby, and he and Jenny on an air mattress. Pulaski had told the worst jokes — children’s jokes — until the youngsters had fallen asleep.

And he and Jenny had cuddled fiercely, until the caress of chill went away under their combined bodies. (No, not that, of course; they were in pajamas as chaste and comical as the children’s.)

How he wanted to be back with his family now. But he pushed aside those thoughts.

Undercover. That was his job. His only job. Jenny was married to Ron Pulaski, not Stan Walesa. The kids didn’t exist.

And neither did Lincoln Rhyme or Amelia Sachs.

All that mattered was finding the associates of the late and not very lamented Watchmaker. Who were they? What were they up to? And most important: Did the killer have a successor?

Ron Pulaski had a thought on this topic, though he’d decided not to say anything to Lincoln or Amelia, for fear that he’d look stupid if proven wrong. (The head injury again. It plagued him every day, every day.)

His theory was this: The lawyer himself was the main associate of the Watchmaker. He’d been lying about never meeting the man. He appeared to be a real lawyer — they’d checked that out. And had a firm in LA. (The assistant who answered the phone said Mr Weller was out of town on business.) But the website looked dicey — bare bones — and it gave only a P.O. box, not a street address. Still, it was typical of an ambulance chaser’s site, Pulaski supposed.

And what was Weller’s plan here?

The same as Pulaski’s maybe. After all, why come to New York to collect ashes when it would have been far easier and cheaper simply to FedEx them to the family?

No, Pulaski was now even more convinced that Weller was here on a fishing expedition himself — to find other partners of the Watchmaker, who had been the sort of master planner to have several projects going on at the same time, without telling one set of colleagues that the others even existed. He guessed that—

His phone vibrated. He answered. It was an NYPD officer from the team at the hotel. He and his partner were in position in the lobby and bar. Pulaski had relayed the details on Weller’s appearance but the undercover reported that there was nobody fitting that description in the lobby yet. It was, however, still early.

‘I’ll be there in five, six minutes.’

‘K,’ said the man with a serenity that Pulaski found reassuring and they disconnected.

A gust of wind slashed. Pulaski pulled his coat more tightly around him. Didn’t do much good. He and Jenny had been talking about getting to a beach, any beach. The kids were in swimming class and he was really looking forward to taking them to an ocean. They’d been to a few lakes Upstate but a sandy beach, with crashing waves? Man, they would love –

‘Hi, there, Mr. Walesa.’

Pulaski stopped abruptly and turned. He tried to mask his surprise.

Ten feet behind him was Dave Weller. What was going on? They were still two blocks from the hotel. Weller had stopped and was standing under the awning of a pet shop, not yet open for business.

Pulaski thought: Act cool. ‘Hey. Thought we were going to meet at the hotel.’ A nod up the street.

Weller said nothing, just looked Pulaski up and down.

The officer said, ‘Hell of a day, hm? This sucks. Been sleeting like this off and on for almost a week.’ He nearly said, ‘You don’t get this in L.A.’ But then he wasn’t supposed to know that the lawyer had his office — or un-office — in California. Of course, maybe it would’ve been less suspicious and more inscrutable to let Weller know he’d done some homework on the man. Hard to tell.

Hell, this undercover stuff, you really had to think ahead.

Pulaski joined Weller in front of the pet store, out of the sleet. In the window, just behind them, was a murky aquarium.

A beach, any beach …

Weller said, ‘Thought this’d be safer.’ That faint Southern accent again.

But, of course, Stan Walesa might be wondering why safety was an issue. He said, ‘Safer?’

But Weller said nothing in reply. He didn’t wear a hat, and his bald head was dotted with moisture.

Pulaski gave a shrug. ‘You were saying you have a client who might want to meet with me.’

‘Maybe.’

‘I’m into import-export. Is that what your client needs?’

‘Could be.’

‘And what specifically you have in mind?’

‘Exactly’ would’ve been better than ‘specifically’. Tough guys wouldn’t use the S word.

Weller’s voice dipped, hard to hear over the wind. ‘You know that project that Richard put together down in Mexico?’

Pulaski’s gut thudded. Getting even better. The man was referring to an attempted hit of a Mexican anti-drug officer a few years ago. Logan had orchestrated an elaborate plan to kill the federale. This was great. If Weller knew about that, he wasn’t quite who he claimed to be.

My theory …

‘Sure. I know it. He told me that that asshole fucked it up, Rhyme.’

So the lawyer did know about the criminalist, after all.

Pulaski offered, ‘But Richard came up with a good plan.’

‘Yeah, it was.’ Weller seemed more comfortable now that Pulaski had given him some details not known in public about Richard Logan. He eased closer. ‘Well, my client might be interested in talking to you about that situation.’

Your client or you? Pulaski wondered. He kept his eyes locked on Weller’s. This was hard but he didn’t waver.

‘What’s there to talk about?’

Weller said evasively: ‘Could be renewed interest in an alternative approach to the situation. In Mexico. Mr Logan had been working on it when he died.’

‘I’m not sure what we’re talking about,’ Pulaski said.

‘A new approach.’

‘Oh.’

‘If it’s to everybody’s advantage.’

‘What kind of advantage?’ Pulaski inquired. This seemed like a good question.

‘Significant.’

That didn’t seem like a particularly good answer. But he knew you had to play games like these — well, he supposed you did, since what he’d learned about undercover work was mostly from Blue Bloods and movies.

‘My client is looking for people he can trust. You might be one of those people. But we’d need to check you out more.’

‘I’ll have to do some checking too.’

‘We’d expect that. And,’ Weller said slowly, ‘my client would need something from you. To show your commitment. Can you bring something to the table?’

‘What sort of “something”?’

‘You have to spend money to make money,’ Weller said.

So, he was being asked to invest. Cash. Good. Much better than having to bring them the head of a rival drug dealer to prove his loyalty.

‘That’s not a problem,’ Pulaski said dismissively, as if he could jump in his private jet, fly to Switzerland and pluck stacks of hundreds from his private bank.

‘What would you be willing to cough up?’

This was a stumper. It was tough to get buy-money for sting operations. The brass knew there was always a chance of losing it. But he had no idea what the limits were. What would they do on Blue Bloods? He shrugged. ‘A hundred K.’

Weller nodded. ‘That’s a good figure.’

And it was then that Pulaski thought: How did he know I’d come this way? There were three or four possible approaches to the hotel. And, hell, for that matter, how did he know I’d be on foot and not take a cab or drive? Earlier Weller had referred to parking in front of the Huntington Arms.

One answer was that Weller, or somebody, had been following Pulaski.

And there was only one reason for that. To set him up. Maybe he’d seen him come out of Rhyme’s and looked up the owner of the townhouse.

And here I am without a fucking wire and two blocks from the backup team and a gun on my ankle, a thousand miles away.

‘So. Glad this is moving along. Let me see about that money and—’

But Weller wasn’t listening. His eyes flickered past Pulaski, who spun around.

Two unsmiling men in leather jackets approached. One with shaggy hair, one with a shaved head.

When they noted Pulaski’s gaze, they drew pistols and lunged.

The young officer turned and started to sprint. He made it all of two yards before the third killer stepped out from behind the truck where he’d been waiting, wrapped his massive arm around the patrolman’s throat and slammed the officer against the window of the pet shop.

Weller stepped back. The hit man touched the gun muzzle to Pulaski’s temple while, inside the store, a colorful toucan in a flamboyant Polynesian cage ruffled its feathers and watched with scant interest the goings-on outside.

CHAPTER 54

Rhyme phoned Rachel Parker and happened to get Lon Sellitto’s son.

The young man had come to town from upstate New York, where he was working after graduating from SUNY in Albany. Rhyme remembered the boy as being quiet and pleasant enough, though he’d had some anger issues and mood problems — common among the children of law enforcers. But that was years ago and now he seemed mature and steady. In a voice missing any of Lon’s Brooklyn twang, Richard Sellitto told Rhyme that his father’s condition was largely unchanged. He was still categorized as critical. Rhyme was pleased that the young man was doing everything he could to support Rachel and Sellitto’s ex, Richard’s mother.

After he disconnected, Rhyme gave Cooper the update — which was really no update at all. He reflected that this was one of the most horrific aspects of poisoning: The substance wormed its way into your cells, destroying delicate tissues for days and weeks afterward. Bullets could be removed and wounds stitched. But poisons hid, residing, and killed at their leisure.

Rhyme now returned to the chart containing the pictures of the tattoos.

What on earth are you trying to say? he wondered yet again.

A puzzle, a quotation, a code? He kept returning to the theory that the clues referred to a location. But where?

His phone buzzed once more. He frowned looking at the caller ID. He didn’t recognize it.

He answered. ‘Rhyme here.’

‘Lincoln.’

‘Rookie? Is that you? What’s wrong?’

‘Yes, I—’

‘Where the hell have you been? The team’s at the hotel, where you’re meeting Weller. Or were supposed to be meeting. They’ve been in place for an hour. You never showed up.’ He added sternly, ‘We were, you can imagine, a little concerned.’

‘There was a problem.’

Rhyme fell silent. ‘And?’

‘I kind of got arrested.’

Rhyme wasn’t sure he’d heard. ‘Say again.’

‘Arrested.’

‘Explain.’

‘I didn’t get to the hotel. I got stopped before.’

‘I said explain. Not confuse.’

Mel Cooper looked his way. Rhyme shrugged.

‘There’s an agent with the NYBI here. He wants to talk to you.’

The New York Bureau of Investigation?

‘Put him on.’

‘Hello, Detective Rhyme?’

He didn’t bother to correct the title.

‘Yes.’

‘This’s Agent Tom Abner, NYBI.’

‘And what’s going on, Agent Abner?’ Rhyme was trying to be patient, though he had a feeling that Pulaski had screwed up the undercover set and ruined whatever chance they had to learn more about the associates of the late Watchmaker. And given the ‘I got arrested’ part, the screwup must’ve been pretty bad.

‘We’ve found out that Ron is an NYPD patrol officer in good standing, active duty. But nobody at headquarters knew about any undercover set he was running. Can you confirm that Ron was working for you on an operation?’

‘I’m civilian, Agent Abner. A consultant. But, yes, he was running an op under the direction of Detective Amelia Sachs, Major Cases. An opportunity presented itself very fast. We didn’t have time to go through channels. Ron was just making initial contact with some possible perps this morning.’

‘Hm. I see.’

‘What happened?’

‘Yesterday, an attorney named David Weller, based in LA, contacted us. He was retained by the family of a decedent, Richard Logan — the convict who died?’

‘Yes.’ Rhyme sighed. And the whole fiasco began to unfold before him.

‘Well, Mr Weller said that somebody had come to the funeral home and was asking a lot of questions about Mr Logan. He seemed to want to meet the family or associates and suggested that he might want to participate in some of the illegal deals that Logan had started before he died. I suggested a sting to see what this fellow had in mind. Mr Weller agreed to help. We wired him up and he mentioned some crime in Mexico that Mr Logan had been involved in. Ron offered money to participate in another attempt to kill same official. As soon as he mentioned a figure we moved in.’

Jesus. Like the most common prostitution sting.

Rhyme said, ‘Richard Logan had orchestrated some pretty complicated crimes when he was alive. He couldn’t have been operating alone. We were trying to find some of his associates.’

‘Got it. But your officer was really pushing the bounds of undercover ops.’

‘He hasn’t done that kind of thing before.’

‘That doesn’t surprise me. Attorney Weller wasn’t too happy about the whole thing, as you can imagine. But he’s not going to pursue any complaint.’

‘Tell him we appreciate that. Can you have Ron call me?’

‘Yessir.’

They disconnected and a moment later the parlor phone rang once more. It was Pulaski’s undercover phone.

‘Rookie.’

‘I’m sorry, Lincoln. I—’

‘Don’t apologize.’

‘I didn’t handle it very well.’

‘I’m not so sure it worked out badly.’

There was a pause. ‘What do you mean?’

‘We learned one thing: Weller and his clients — the Logan family — don’t have any connection with any of the Watchmaker’s associates or any planned crimes. Otherwise, they wouldn’t’ve dimed you out.’

‘I guess.’

‘You’re free to go?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, the good news is we can let the Watchmaker rest in peace. No more distractions. We’ve got an unsub to catch. Get your ass back here. Now.’

He disconnected before the young officer said anything more.

It was then that Rhyme’s phone rang and he received the news that there’d been a fourth attack.

And when he heard that the killing had been in a tattoo parlor in downtown Manhattan, he asked immediately which one.

Upon hearing that — not surprisingly — it was TT Gordon’s shop, Rhyme sighed and lowered his head. ‘No, no,’ he whispered. For a moment Views of Death No. One and Two vied. Then the first prevailed and Rhyme called Sachs to tell her she had yet another scene to run.

CHAPTER 55

Amelia Sachs returned from the most recent crime scene in the Unsub 11-5 case. TT Gordon’s tattoo parlor in the East Village.

It turned out, though, that Gordon himself was not the victim. He’d been out of the parlor when the unsub snuck inside, locked the door and proceeded into the back room for the lethal tattooing session. The body was that of one of the artists who worked in the parlor, a man named Eddie Beaufort. He was a transplant from South Carolina who’d moved to New York a few years ago and was, Sachs had learned from Gordon, making a name for himself in the inking world.

‘We should’ve had somebody on the tattoo parlor, Rhyme,’ she said.

‘Who would’ve thought he’d be at risk?’ Rhyme was truly surprised that the unsub had tracked the artist down. How? It seemed unlikely but possible that he’d followed Gordon from Rhyme’s. But the tat community would be a small one and word must’ve gotten back to the killer that Gordon was helping with the case. The unsub would have heard and gone to the parlor to kill him. Finding he wasn’t there, maybe he had just decided to make clear that it was a bad idea to assist the police and picked for a victim the first employee he found.

It was also time to send another message.

Sachs described the scene: Beaufort, lying on his back. His shirt was off and the unsub had tattooed another part of the puzzle on his abdomen. She slid the SD card from her camera and displayed the pictures on the screen.

Ron Pulaski, back from his car wreck of an undercover assignment, stood in front of the display with his arms crossed. ‘They’re not numerical order: the second, forty, seventeenth and the six hundredth.’

Rhyme said, ‘Good point. He could have gone numerically if he’d wanted to. Either the order is significant — or he wanted to scramble them for some reason. And we’re ordinal again, not cardinal. “Fort”Y is the only cardinal number.’

Mel Cooper now suggested, ‘An encryption?’

That was a possibility. But there were far too many combinations and no common reference point. In breaking a simple code in which letters are converted to numbers, you can start with the knowledge that the letter ‘e’ appears most frequently in the English language and preliminarily assign that value to the most commonly occurring numbers in the code. But here, they had far too few numbers — and they were combined with words, which suggested that the numbers did not mean anything other than what they appeared to be, cryptic though that meaning was.

It could still be a location, but this number eliminated longitude or latitude. One or more addresses?

Pulaski said, ‘Beaufort wasn’t killed underground.’

Rhyme pointed out, ‘No, the unsub’s motive was different here: to kill TT Gordon specifically or at least somebody in the parlor. He didn’t need to follow his standard MO. Now, let’s look at what else you collected, Sachs.’

She and Cooper walked to the examination table. Both donned gloves and face masks.

‘No prints, finger or footwear,’ she said. ‘ME has the blood workup. I told him we needed the results yesterday. He said it was all hands on deck.’

‘Other trace?’ Rhyme asked.

Sachs nodded at several bags.

The criminalist barked, ‘Mel, get on that.’

As Cooper picked up and examined each one, then analyzed the contents, Sachs ran through the other pictures of the scene. Eddie Beaufort, hands cuffed behind him and lying on his back, like the others. It was obvious he’d suffered gastrointestinal symptoms and severe vomiting.

The phone rang with a familiar number.

Sachs gave a laugh. ‘That’s as ASAP as it gets.’

‘Doctor, it’s Lincoln Rhyme,’ he said to the medical examiner. ‘What do you have?’

‘Odd, Captain.’ Using Rhyme’s old title. It never failed to be both jarring and familiar.

‘How? Exactly.’

‘The victim was killed by amatoxin alpha-amanitin.’

‘Death cap mushroom,’ Cooper said. ‘Amanita phalloides.’

‘That’s it,’ the medical examiner said.

Rhyme knew them well. Amanitas are known for three things: a smell like honey, a very pleasant taste and the ability to kill more efficiently than any other fungus on earth.

‘And the odd part?’

‘The dosage. I’ve never seen a concentration this high. Usually it takes days to die, but he lasted about an hour I’d guess.’

‘And a pretty bad hour,’ Sachs said.

‘Well, that’s right,’ said the medical examiner, as if this had never occurred to him.

‘Any other substances?’

‘More propofol. Just like the others.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Nope.’

Rhyme grimaced and began to hit disconnect. Sachs called, ‘Thanks.’

‘You’re—’

Click.

‘Keep going, Mel,’ Rhyme said.

Cooper ran another sample of trace through the gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer. ‘This is—’

‘Don’t say “odd”,’ Rhyme snapped. ‘I’ve had enough odd.’

‘Troubling. That was the word.’

‘Go on.’

‘Nitrocellulose, di-ethylene glycol dinitrate, dibutyl phthalate, diphenylamine, potassium chloride, graphite.’

Rhyme frowned. ‘How much?’

‘A lot.’

‘What is it, Lincoln?’ Pulaski asked.

‘Explosives. Gunpowder, specifically. Smokeless — modern formulation.’

Sachs asked the tech, ‘From a discharged weapon?’

‘No. Some actual grains. Pre-burn.’

Pulaski asked, ‘He reloads his own ammunition?’

It was a reasonable suggestion. But Rhyme considered this for a moment and then said, ‘No, I don’t think so. Usually it’s only snipers and hunters who reload. And our unsub hasn’t left any evidence that he’s either. Not much interest in firearms at all.’ Rhyme stared at the computer printout of the GC/MS. ‘No, I think he’s using the raw powder for an improvised explosive device.’ He sighed. ‘Poison’s not enough. Now he wants to blow something up.’

CHAPTER 56

‘You know how skeptical I am of motives.’

Sachs said nothing, but a cresting smile told her reaction.

Easing his wheelchair up to the evidence boards, Rhyme continued, ‘But there’s a time when it’s appropriate to ask about them — particularly when we’ve built up a solid evidentiary base. Which we have. The possibility of a bomb — possibility, mind you — may take this out of psychotic-perp world. There’s a rational motive at work possibly. Our unsub’s not necessarily satisfying deep-seated yearnings to do the Bone Collector one better. I think he may have something more calculated in mind. Yes, yes, this could be good,’ he added enthusiastically. ‘I want to look at the victims again.’

The team perused the charts. Rhyme said, ‘We can take Eddie Beaufort out of the equation. He was killed because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Lon and Seth and I were attacked to slow us down. There were four intended attacks as part of his plan: We ruined two of them — Harriet Stanton at the hospital and Braden Alexander at the Belvedere Apartments. And two were successful. Chloe and Samantha. Why those four?’ Rhyme whispered, ‘What about them beckoned?’

Sachs said, ‘I don’t know, Rhyme. They seemed purely random … happenstance victims.’

Rhyme stared up at the board in front of him. ‘Yes, the victims themselves are random. But what if—’

Pulaski blurted, ‘The places aren’t? Did he pretend to be psycho to take attention away from the fact that there’s something at the scenes he wants to blow up?’

‘Ex-actly, rookie!’ Rhyme scanned the boards. ‘Location, location, location.’

Cooper said, ‘But blow up what? And how?’

Rhyme scanned the crime scene photos again. Then: ‘Sachs!’

She lifted an eyebrow.

‘When we weren’t sure where the hypochlorous acid came from we sent patrolmen to the scenes, remember? To see if there were chlorine distribution systems there.’

‘Right. The boutique in SoHo and the restaurant. They didn’t find any.’

‘Yes, yes, yes, but it’s not the acid I’m thinking of.’ Rhyme wheeled closer to the monitor, studying the images. ‘Look at those pictures you took, Sachs. The spotlights and batteries. Did you set them up?’

‘No, the first responders did.’ She was frowning. ‘I assumed they did. They were there when I arrived. Both scenes.’

‘And the officer who searched the tunnel for chlorine later said he was standing by the spotlights. They were still there. Why?’ He frowned and said to Sachs, ‘Find out who set them up.’

Sachs grabbed her phone and called the Crime Scene Unit in Queens. ‘Joey, it’s Amelia. When your people were running the Unsub Eleven-Five scenes, did you bring halogens to any of them? … No.’ She was nodding. ‘Thanks.’ Disconnected.

‘They never set them up, Rhyme. They weren’t our lights.’ She then called a friend at the fire department and asked the same question. After a brief conversation she disconnected and reported, ‘Uh-uh. They weren’t the FD’s either. And patrol doesn’t carry around spots in their RMPs. Only Emergency Service does and they didn’t respond until later.’

‘And, hell,’ Rhyme snapped, ‘I’ll bet there’re lights in the tunnel under the Belvedere.’

Sachs: ‘That’s what the bombs’re in, right? The batteries.’

Rhyme looked over the images. ‘The batteries look like twelve-volt. You can run halogens on batteries that’re a lot smaller. The rest of the casing’s filled with gunpowder, I’m sure. It’s brilliant. Nobody’d question spotlights and batteries sitting in a crime scene perimeter. Any other mysterious packages’d be reported and examined by the Bomb Squad.’

‘But what’s the target?’ Cooper asked.

The brief silence was broken by Amelia Sachs. ‘My God.’

‘What, Sachs?’

‘IFON.’ She dug what seemed to be a business card out of her purse. And walked fast to the crime scene photos. ‘Hell, I missed it, Rhyme. Missed it completely.’

‘Go on.’

She tapped the screen. ‘Those yellow boxes with IFON printed on the side? They’re Internet cables, owned by International Fiber Optic Networks.’ She held up the card. ‘And the building directly over the Samantha Levine crime scene was IFON’s headquarters. She worked for them. I interviewed the CEO just after she died.’ Sachs then called up the photos of the Chloe Moore scene. ‘There. The same boxes.’

And there was another box visible in the tunnel beneath the parking garage in the Belvedere Apartments.

Sachs said, ‘In the hospital, in Marble Hill, where Harriet Stanton was attacked, I didn’t go underground to look for any tunnels. But I’ll bet there’re IFON routers or whatever they are somewhere.’

Pulaski said, ‘Somebody wants to blow up the boxes.’ His face finally grew inscrutable. ‘Hey — think about it — the Internet outages? The rumors of the traditional cable companies sabotaging the new fiber-optic systems? I’ll bet that’s it.’

Sachs said, ‘Our Skin Collector may feel like he’s the Bone Collector’s heir but, bottom line? That’s just a cover. He was hired to smuggle bombs underground to take out International Fiber Optic’s routers.’

Pulaski asked, ‘What would happen if they detonated?’

‘Assume the entire Internet in Manhattan would go down,’ Cooper said.

‘Banks,’ Rhyme muttered. ‘And hospitals, police, national security, air traffic control. Call Dellray and have him alert Homeland Security. I’m guessing hundreds of deaths and billions of dollars in losses. Get our computer man, Rodney Szarnek, on the phone. Now.’

CHAPTER 57

Harriet Stanton was returning with her husband, Matthew, from Upper Manhattan Medical Center in Marble Hill.

They were in a cab, which was — so far — about seventeen dollars in fare.

‘Look at that,’ Matthew muttered, eyeing the meter. ‘Can you believe it? It’ll be thirty by the time we get to the hotel. Subway would’ve been cheaper.’ Matthew had always been a bit of a curmudgeon. Now, after the brush with death — or with New York City health care — his mood hadn’t improved.

Harriet, in her yes-dear mode, replied that given the neighborhood they’d been driving through — the Bronx and Harlem — wouldn’t it be better to spend the money? ‘And look at the weather.’

Where they lived, in downstate Illinois, the weather could be just as cold and sloppy. It didn’t seem, though, so dirty cold and sloppy. Tainted was the word that came to mind.

Matthew took her hand, which was a way of saying, You’re right, I suppose.

His bill of health was, if not clean, then not as bad as it might’ve been. Yes, the incident had been a heart attack — or the ten-dollar phrase, myocardial infarction — but no surgery was called for. Medication and a slow, steady increase in the amount of exercise should do the trick, the doctor had told them. Aspirin, of course. Always aspirin.

She called their son, Josh, back at the hotel, and told him to collect Matthew’s prescriptions, which the doctor had called in to a nearby pharmacy. Matthew sat back silently in the seat of the taxi and stared at the sights. The people were what interested him, she judged, from the way his eyes danced from one cluster of passersby to another.

The cab dropped them in front of their hotel. The place had been built in the 1930s or so, Harriet guessed, and clearly hadn’t undergone a renovation for years. The colors were gold and yellow and gray. The scuffed walls and over-washed curtains had brash, geometric designs, ugly. The place reminded her of the Moose Lodge at home.

The decor, along with the persistent scent of Lysol and onions, set her on edge. But maybe that was just the disappointment about her husband’s heart attack, the disruption of their plans. They rode the elevator to the tenth floor and stepped out, walked to their room.

Harriet felt like she should help her husband into bed or, if he chose to stay up, help him on with his slippers and into some comfortable clothing and order some food. But he waved her off — though with a faint smile — and sat at the battered desk, going online. ‘See. I was saying. Fifteen dollars a day for the Internet. At Red Roof it’s free. Or Best Western. Where’s Josh?’

‘Getting your prescriptions.’

‘He probably got lost.’

Harriet placed a load of dirty clothing into the room’s dry-cleaning bag, which she’d take to the guest self-serve laundry room in the basement. This was one thing that she would not pay for, hotel valet service. It was ridiculous.

She paused to look at herself in the mirror, noting that her tan skirt needed no pressing and the brown sweater, clinging to her voluptuous figure, was largely hair-free. Largely but not completely. She plucked off several strands and let them fall to the floor; they had three German shepherds at home. She wound together stray strands of her own hair, milking to white, and pinned them into her severe bun.

She noted that in her haste to get to the hospital she’d hooked her silver necklace on backward and she fixed it now, though the design appeared abstract; no one would have noted the mistake.

Then a grimace; don’t be so vain.

Leaving Matthew, she walked into the hallway with the laundry and took the elevator to the lobby. It was crowded. She waited in line at the front desk, to get change. A gaggle of Japanese tourists clustered around their suitcases like pioneers protecting their women. A couple that appeared to be honeymooning stood nearby, adoring each other. Two men — gay, she could see — chatted enthusiastically about some plans that night. Young, leather jacketed musicians lounged, their feet up on battered instrument cases. An obese couple pored over a map. The husband was in shorts. In this weather. And with those legs!

New York. What a place.

Harriet suddenly had a sense that somebody was watching her. She looked up quickly. But didn’t see anyone. Still, she was left with an uneasy feeling.

Well, after the close call at the hospital, it was natural for her to be a little paranoid.

‘Ma’am?’ she heard.

‘Oh, sorry.’ She turned back to the desk clerk and got change for a ten.

She took the elevator to the basement and followed signage down two corridors to the laundry room, a dim space, dusted with spilled detergent and smelling of dryer exhaust and hot lint. Like the hallways, the room was deserted.

She heard the click and then the rumble of the elevator going up. A moment later there came the sound of a car returning to this level. If it was the same one, it had only traveled to the main floor.

Two dollars for a one-use container of detergent? She should have had Josh pick up a bottle of Tide at the drug store. Then reminded herself: Don’t be like Matthew. Don’t worry about the petty things.

Were those footsteps coming from the direction of the elevator?

She glanced toward the doorway, the shadowy corridor. Heart thudding a bit faster, her palms dampening.

Nothing.

She added the clothing to the least-dirty machine and shoved in the six quarters.

Then footsteps again, growing louder.

She turned, staring at the young man in the tan leather jacket and green NY Mets cap. He carried a backpack and a canvas work bag.

Silence for a moment.

Then she smiled. ‘Billy.’

‘Aunt Harriet.’ Billy Haven looked around to make certain they were alone and then stepped inside the room. He set down the bags.

She lifted her hands, palm up. Like summoning a child.

Billy hesitated then came to her and let himself be drawn into her arms, which closed around him, enwrapping him tightly. They were about the same height — she was just under six feet herself — and Harriet easily maneuvered her face to his, kissing him hard on the mouth.

She sensed him resist for a moment but then he gave in and kissed her back, gripping her lips with his, tasting her. Not wanting to but unable to stop.

It had always been this way with him: reluctant at first, then yielding … then growing commanding as he pushed her down on her back and wrestled off clothing.

Always this way — from the very first time, more than a decade ago, when she’d pulled the boy into the study above the garage, the Oleander Room, for their afternoon trysts, while Matthew was busy with — aunt and nephew sometimes joked — God knew what.

CHAPTER 58

Typically — and irritatingly — Rodney Szarnek was listening to some god-awful rock when he picked up the call from Rhyme’s parlor.

‘Rodney, you’re on speaker. It’s … Can we lose the music?’

If you could call that head-banging crap music.

‘Hey, Lincoln. That’s you, right?’

Rhyme turned to Sachs and rolled his eyes.

The cyber detective was probably half deaf.

‘Rodney, we have a situation.’

‘Yup. Go on.’

Rhyme explained about the bombs and where they’d been set — near key International Fiber Optic Networks routers and under the company’s headquarters.

‘Man, that’s tough, Lincoln.’

‘I have no idea what the detonator timing situation is. It’s possible we can’t render-safe before one or maybe all of them go off.’

‘Are you evacuating?’

‘Under way right now. They’re gunpowder bombs, not plastic explosives — that we know — so we don’t think there’s a risk of major casualties. But the infrastructure damage could be significant.’

‘Oh.’

The detective didn’t sound concerned. Was he checking his iPod for a new song list?

‘How can I help?’ he finally asked, as if his sole purpose was to fill the growing silence.

‘Whom should we call, what precautions should we take?’

‘For what?’ the computer cop asked.

Jesus Christ. What was the disconnect? ‘Rodney. If. The. Bombs. Go. Off. The Internet — what precautions should we take?’

More silence. ‘You’re asking if bombs take out a couple of the fiber-optic routers.’

A sigh from Rhyme. ‘Yes, Rodney. That’s what I’m asking. And the IFON headquarters.’

‘There’s nothing to do.’

‘But what about security services, hospitals, Wall Street, air traffic control, alarms? It’s the Internet, for God’s sake. Some cable company’s hired industrial saboteurs to blow it up.’

‘Oh, I get it.’ He sounded amused. ‘You’re thinking like some Bruce Willis movie thing? The stock markets crash, somebody sticks up a bank because the alarms are off, kidnaps the mayor, since the web’s out?’

‘Well, along those lines, yes.’

‘Look, the cable syndicate versus the fiber-optic outfit? That’s way old news. Used chewing gum.’

I don’t need two fucking clichés in a row. Get to the point. Rhyme fumed, but silently.

‘They don’t like each other, IFON and the traditional cable providers. But nobody’s going to sabotage anything. In fact, in six months International Fiber Optic will’ve bought out or signed licensing agreements with the other cable companies.’

‘You don’t think they’d try to blow up IFON routers?’

‘Naw. Even if they did, or anybody did, you’d have a five-, ten-minute interruption in service in isolated parts of the city. Believe me, Chinese and Bulgarian hackers cause more problems than that every day.’

Sachs asked, ‘You’re sure that’s all that would happen?’

‘Hey, hi, Amelia. Okay, maybe twenty minutes. ISPs’ve thought of this before, you know. There’s so much redundancy in the system, we call it dedundant.’

Rhyme was irritated both at the bad joke and that his theory was in the toilet.

‘At the very worst, signals’d be rerouted to backup servers in Jersey, Queens and Connecticut. Oh, traffic’d be slower. You couldn’t stream porn or play World of Warcraft without the signals’ breaking up but basic services’d keep running. I’ll call the providers and Homeland Security, though, and give them a heads-up.’

‘Thanks, Rodney,’ Sachs said.

The music rose in volume and the line went to blessed silence.

Rhyme parked in front of the evidence boards and photos. He had another thought, discouraging. He snapped, ‘Sloppy thinking — speculating that Samantha Levine, from IFON, was the target. How would the unsub know she’d go to the bathroom at just that time, and be waiting for her? Careless. Stupid.’

The idea of the syndicate of traditional cable Internet providers taking down the fiber-optic interloper had seemed good — sheep ranchers versus cattle barons. Like most conspiracy theories, it was sexy but ultimately junk.

His eyes strayed to the tattoos.

Rhyme read them out loud.

Pulaski, next to him, leaned forward. ‘And those wavy lines.’

‘Scallops,’ Rhyme corrected.

‘I don’t know what a scallop is except a seafood thing that tastes pretty bland unless you put sauce on it.’

‘The shell that seafood thing comes in is shaped like that,’ Rhyme murmured.

‘Oh. To me they just looked like waves.’

Rhyme frowned. Then he whispered, ‘And waves that TT Gordon said were significant — because of the scarification.’ After a moment: ‘I was wrong. It’s not a location he’s giving us. Goddamn!’ Rhyme spat out. Then he blinked and laughed.

‘What?’ Sachs asked.

‘I just made a very bad joke. When I said, “Goddamn.”’

‘How do you mean, Lincoln?’ Cooper wondered aloud.

He ignored the question, calling, ‘Bible! I need a Bible.’

‘Well, we don’t have one here, Lincoln,’ Thom said.

‘Online. Find me a Bible online. You’re on to something, rookie.’

‘I am?’

CHAPTER 59

Leaning against the wall, his arms crossed, Billy watched his aunt Harriet — his mother’s sister — add soap to the washer.

She asked, ‘Did you see anybody in the lobby? I was worried the police were watching me. I felt something.’

‘No. I checked. Carefully. I’ve been up there for an hour.’

‘I didn’t see you.’

‘I was watching,’ Billy said. ‘Not being watched.’

She lowered the lid and he glanced at her breasts, her legs, her neck. Memories …

He always wondered if his uncle knew about their time in the Oleander Room.

In one way it seemed impossible that Uncle Matthew had been oblivious to their affair, or whatever you wanted to call it. How could he miss that the two would disappear for several hours in the afternoon on the days when she wasn’t homeschooling neighborhood children?

And there had to be shared smells, smells of each other’s bodies and of perfume and deodorant.

The smell of the blood too, even though they would shower meticulously after every afternoon liaison.

All the blood …

The American Families First Council had a religious component. The tenets didn’t allow members to use birth control any more than they sanctioned abortion and so Harriet ‘invited’ Billy to the studio above the garage only at that time of month when they could be absolutely certain there’d be no pregnancy. Billy could control his repulsion, and, for some reason, the sight of the crimson smears inflamed Harriet all the more. Oleander and blood were forever joined in Billy Haven’s mind.

Uncle Matthew might not even have known about that aspect of women’s bodies. Wouldn’t surprise Billy.

Then too, when it came to what she wanted, Harriet Stanton could look you in the eye and make you believe just about anything. Billy didn’t doubt that whatever story she spun for her husband he bought pretty much as-is.

‘This will be your art studio,’ she’d told thirteen-year-old Billy, showing him for the first time the room she’d decorated above the detached garage of their compound in Southern Illinois. On the wall was a watercolor he’d done for her of an oleander — her favorite flower (a poisonous one, of course). ‘That’s my favorite picture of yours. We’ll call this the Oleander Room. Our Oleander Room.’

And she’d tugged at his belt. Playfully but with unyielding determination.

‘Wait, no, Aunt Harriet. What’re you doing?’ He’d looked up at her with horror; not only was there a strong resemblance to his mother, Harriet’s sister, but Harriet and Matthew were his de facto foster parents. Billy’s mother and father had died violently, if heroically. Orphaned, the boy had been taken in by the Stantons.

‘Uhm, I don’t think I want to, you know, do that,’ the boy had said.

But it was as if he hadn’t even spoken.

The belt had come off.

And so the bloody years of the Oleander Room began.

On the trip here to New York, there’d been one liaison between the two of them: the day of Billy’s escape from the hospital — where he’d gone not to mod another victim but simply to visit his aunt, ailing uncle and cousin Josh. Billy had hardly been in the mood to satisfy her. (Which is what sex with Aunt Harriet was all about.) But she’d insisted he come to the hotel — Matthew was still in the hospital and she’d sent Joshua out to run some errands. Josh always did what Mommy asked.

Now, with the washer chugging rhythmically, Billy asked, ‘How is he? Josh said he looks pretty good. Just a little pale.’

‘Damn it,’ Harriet said bitterly. ‘Matthew’s going to be fine. He couldn’t be courteous and just die.’

‘Would have been convenient,’ the young man agreed. ‘But it’ll be better the way you planned it originally.’

‘I suppose.’

Better in this sense: After they had completed the Modification here in New York, they’d return to their home in Southern Illinois, murder Matthew and blame it on some hapless black or Latino plucked at random from a soup kitchen in Alton or East St Louis. Matthew would be a martyr and Billy would take over the American Families First Council, building it into the finest militia in the country.

Billy would be king and Harriet queen. Or queen mother. Well, both really.

The AFFC was one of dozens of militias around the country all joined in a loose alliance. The names were different but the views virtually identical: state or municipal or — best of all — clan rights over federal, ending the liberal media’s lock on propaganda, complete cessation of aid to or intervention in foreign countries, a ban on homosexuality (not just gay marriage), outlawing mixed marriage and supporting separate (and not necessarily equal) doctrines for the races, kicking all immigrants out of the country, a Christ-inspired government, homeschooling. Limitations on non-Christian religious practices.

Many, many Americans held these views or some of them but the problem such militias faced in expanding membership wasn’t their views, but that they were run by people like Matthew Stanton — aging, unimaginative men with no appeal whatsoever except to aging unimaginative men.

There was no doubt that Uncle Matthew Stanton had been effective in his day. He was a charismatic lecturer and teacher. He believed to his core in the teachings of Christ and of the founding fathers — the devout Christian ones, at least. But he’d never had a win like the Oklahoma City bombing. And his proactive approach to fighting for the cause was the mundane killing or maiming of an abortion doctor occasionally, firebombing a clinic or IRS office, beating up migrant workers or Muslims or gays.

Harriet Stanton, though, far more ambitious than her husband, knew that the militia would die out within the next decade unless they brought new blood, new approaches to spreading their political message and appealing to a younger, hipper audience. The Modification had been her idea — though spoon-fed slowly to Matthew to make him believe that he’d thought of it.

As Harriet and Billy had lain on the settee in the Oleander Room several months ago, she’d explained her vision to her nephew. ‘We need somebody in charge who can appeal to the new generation. Excitement. Enthusiasm. Creative thinking. Social media. You’ll bring the young people in. When you talk about the Rule, they’ll listen. The boys will idolize you. The girls’ll have crushes. You can get them to do anything. You’ll be the Harry Potter of the cause.

‘After Matthew’s dead your stock’ll be through the roof. We can bring hundreds, thousands of young people into the fold. We’ll take over Midwest Patriot Frontier.’ This was a legendary militia not far from the AFFC hometown, headed by two visionary leaders. ‘And we’ll keep going, spread around the country.’

Harriet believed there were vast swaths of the American people who hated the direction the country was going and would join the AFFC. But they needed to know what dangers were out there — terrorists, Islamists, minorities, socialists. And they needed a charismatic young leader to protect them from those threats.

Harriet and Billy would save them all.

There was another reason for the coup. Harriet had limited power in the AFFC as it existed now — since she was, of course, merely a woman, the wife of the founder of the Council. Billy and the new generation believed that discrimination against women deflected from the important issues — of racial segregation and nationalism. As long as Matthew or his kind — the hunting and cigar-smoking sort — were in charge, Harriet would be marginalized. That was simply not acceptable. Billy would empower her.

Now, in the laundry room, he felt her gaze and finally looked back. This locking of eyes was as he’d remembered it for years. When he was atop her, every time he would press his face into the pillow but she would grip his hair and draw him back until they were pupil-to-pupil.

She asked, ‘Now, what are the police leads like?’

‘We’re okay,’ Billy said. ‘The cops’re good. Better than predicted but they bought your description — the Russian or Slav, thirty, round head, light blue eyes. The opposite of me.’

When Amelia Sachs had ‘rescued’ Harriet in the hospital, the woman had come up with a false description for the Identi-Kit artist, to lead the police away from her nephew, who’d come to the hospital not to ink another victim to death but merely to visit Matthew.

Billy asked about his cousin, was he handling everything all right?

‘Josh is Josh,’ Harriet said distractedly. Which pretty much described the mother-son relationship in a nutshell. Then she was laughing like a schoolgirl. ‘We’re having quite a trip to New York, aren’t we? Didn’t turn out the way we’d planned but I do think it’s for the best. After the heart attack, Matthew’ll be seen as weak. Easier for him to … go away when we get back home. God works in mysterious ways, doesn’t He?’

His aunt stepped forward, gripping his arm, and with her other hand brushed fingers across his smooth cheek.

A light flashed on the washer and it moved to a different portion of the cycle. Harriet looked at the machine with a critical eye. Billy recalled that at home she let clothing dry naturally on lines. He pictured them now, slumped body parts, swaying in the breeze. Sometimes she would bring lengths of clothesline to the Oleander Room.

He now saw that Harriet’s hands were at her hair and the pins were coming out. She was smiling at him again. Smiling a certain way.

Now? Was she serious?

But why did he even bother to wonder? Aunt Harriet never kidded. She walked to the laundry room door and closed it.

The hypnotic rhythm of water sloshing was the only sound in the room.

Harriet locked the laundry room door. Then snapped out the overhead light.

CHAPTER 60

‘Bomb Squads are rolling,’ Pulaski called.

‘Good. So, did you find it, Mel?’

Cooper had a Bible pulled up on the main monitor. He was reading. ‘Just like you said, Lincoln. In the book of Genesis.’

‘Read it.’

‘“In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.”’ Cooper looked up. ‘We’ve got “the six hundredth”, “the second”, “seventeenth” and “forty”. They’re all there.’

‘The other book! I need the other book!’

‘Serial Cities?’ Cooper asked.

‘What else, Mel? I’m hardly in the mood for Proust, Anna Karenina or Fifteen Shades of Grey.’

‘It’s Fifty,’ Pulaski said and received a withering glance in exchange. ‘I’m just saying. It’s not like I read it or anything.’

Amelia Sachs found the true crime book and flipped the slim volume open. ‘What should I look up, Rhyme?’

Rhyme said, ‘The footnote. I’m interested in the footnote about our investigation of Charlotte, Pam’s mother, and her right-wing militia cell.’

The bombing in New York that Charlotte had planned out.

Sachs read the lengthy passage. It detailed how Rhyme, the NYPD and the FBI had investigated the case.

Rhyme blurted, ‘Okay, our unsub maybe does have some affection, if you will, for the Bone Collector. But that’s not why Eleven-Five was looking for the book — he wanted to see our techniques in tracking down domestic terror cells. Not psychotics. That was an assumption I made,’ Rhyme said, spitting out the noun as if it were an obscenity.

‘A cell hired him to do this?’ Pulaski asked.

‘Maybe. Or maybe he’s part of the group himself. And the target?’ Rhyme gestured at the pictures of the underground crime scenes: ‘See the pipes. The ones stamped with DEP. Environmental Protection. Water pipes.’

Sachs said, ‘Waves, the biblical flood. Of course. They want to blow the city’s water mains.’

‘Exactly. The crime scenes are in places where the flooding would cause the most damage if the pipes blew.’

Rhyme turned to Pulaski. ‘Thanks, rookie.’

‘You’re welcome. I’m still not sure what I did.’

‘You thought those scars around the numbers were waves, not scallops. And they were. Waves! That put me in mind of the flood and Noah. Now we’ve got an apocalyptic theme going. This changes everything.’ Rhyme scanned the evidence chart. His thoughts fell hard, clattering like the sleet outside. Good, good. Moving along.’

Mel Cooper asked, ‘How would the unsub know where the vulnerable spots would be, though? The water grid charts’re classified.’

It was then that Rhyme’s mind made one of its unaccountable leaps. They didn’t happen often; most deductions are inevitable if you have enough facts. But occasionally, rarely, an insight gelled from the most gossamer of connections.

‘The bit of beard — the one you found here, by the shelf when Eleven-Five ruined my favorite single-malt.’

Eyes bright, Sachs said, ‘We thought it was cross-contamination. But it wasn’t. The beard came from Unsub Eleven-Five himself when he broke in here. Because he was the one who killed the worker last week.’

‘To get the keys to his office,’ Rhyme said.

‘Why? Where did he work?’ From Ron Pulaski.

‘Public works, specifically, Environmental Protection,’ Rhyme muttered. ‘Which runs the water supply system. The unsub broke in and stole the water grid charts to know where to plant the IEDs. Ah, and the blueprint fiber that the perp left at the scene in Pam’s apartment, when he attacked Seth? That was from the plans.’

Rhyme looked again at the map of the city. He pointed to massive Water Tunnel 3, the biggest public works project in the history of the city. It was one of the most massive sources of water in the world. The tunnel itself was too far underground to be vulnerable. But there were huge distribution lines running from it throughout the city. If they were to blow, billions of gallons of water would gush through Midtown and lower Manhattan. The results would be far worse than any hurricane could produce.

‘Call Major Cases,’ Rhyme ordered. ‘And Environmental Protection and the mayor. I want the water supply shut down now.’

CHAPTER 61

‘How are you feeling, Uncle Matthew?’

‘All right,’ the man muttered. ‘In the hospital you could count on one hand the number of people who spoke English. Lord have mercy.’

That, Billy was sure, wasn’t accurate. And was typical of exactly the attitude that the AFFC had to guard against. The issue wasn’t that the hospital workers didn’t speak English; of course they did. It was that they spoke it with thick accents, and not very well. And that, like the color of their skin, was proof that they came from cultures and nations that didn’t represent proper values. And that they hadn’t bothered to assimilate.

‘Well, you’re back and looking good.’ He sized up the older man — 190 pounds, slightly damaged cardiac system, but healthy otherwise. Yep, it seemed he’d live forever … or until Billy put a bullet in his uncle’s head and then propped the gun in the hand of some hapless day laborer, whom Billy and a half-dozen others had already clubbed to death in ‘self-defense’.

‘He’s doing just fine,’ Harriet said, her voice light as mist as she stowed freshly washed and folded laundry. ‘Back to normal.’

‘Hey, bro.’ Joshua Stanton joined them from the bedroom in the small suite. When Joshua heard voices from nearby he tended to appear quickly, as if he couldn’t stand the thought that a conversation was occurring without his presence. He may also have worried that people were saying things about him, though really there was very little to say about Joshua, except that the twenty-two-year-old was a competent plumber’s assistant whose main talent was killing birds and deer and abortion doctors.

Still the solidly built man, strawberry blond, was dependable to the point of irritation, doggedly doing what he’d been told and reporting regularly in great depth about his progress. Billy wasn’t quite sure how he’d found a wife and managed to father four children.

Well, dogs and salamanders were capable of the same. Though then he had trouble dislodging the image of Josh as a lizard.

Joshua hugged his cousin, which Billy would have preferred he not do. Not germs; that transfer of evidence matter.

I try, M. Locard.

No, Joshua wasn’t the brightest bulb. But he’d been key in the Modification. After Billy had killed the victims, and the bodies had been discovered, Joshua, dressed in medical coveralls and face mask, had quickly appeared, carting into the tunnels the lights and batteries containing the bombs, set them up and vanished. Nobody thought twice about him. An emergency worker.

The young man now prattled on about his success in the masquerade, smuggling the devices into the crime scenes. He kept looking Billy’s way for approval, which his younger cousin gave in the form of a nod.

Harriet glanced at her son with a dip of eyelid, which Billy knew meant Quiet. But Joshua missed it. And kept talking.

‘It was pretty close at the Belvedere. I mean really. There were cops everywhere! I had to go through a different manhole than was in the plan. It added another six minutes but I don’t think it was a problem.’

The look from Aunt Harriet again.

Matthew didn’t need the patience that women in the AFFC were required to display. He snapped, ‘Shut up, son.’

‘Yessir.’

Billy was troubled by his uncle’s and aunt’s treatment of his cousin. Matthew was just plain mean and it was pathetic how Josh simply took it. As for Harriet, she largely ignored him. Billy sometimes wondered if she ever took her own son to the Oleander Room. He’d concluded no. Not because that would be too perverse. Rather because Josh probably didn’t have the stamina to meet his mother’s needs; even Billy could manage only three times an afternoon and Harriet occasionally seemed disappointed by that low sum.

Billy liked Joshua. He had fond memories of the years spent with him, his de facto brother. They’d tossed footballs and played catch because they thought they ought to. They’d flirted with girls for the same reason. They’d tinkered with cars. Finally in a moment of adolescent candor they admitted they didn’t really like sports or cars and were lukewarm about dating. And took up more enjoyable activities — stalking faggots and beating the crap out of them. Illegals, too. Or legals (they still weren’t white). Graffiti’ing crosses on synagogues and swastikas on black churches. They’d burned an abortion clinic to the ground.

Billy’s watch hummed. ‘It’s time.’ A few seconds later, another vibration.

Uncle Matthew looked at the backpack and gear bag. He announced, ‘We’ll pray.’

The family got down on their knees, even unsteady Matthew, and Harriet and Joshua took positions on either side of Billy. They all held hands. Harriet was gripping Billy’s. She squeezed his once. Hard.

Matthew’s voice — a bit weak but still powerful enough to split open sinners’ hearts — intoned, ‘Lord, we thank You for giving us the wisdom and the courage to do what we are about to do, in Your name. We thank You for the vision You put into our souls and for the plans You’ve delivered into our hands. Amen.’

‘Amen’ echoed through the room.

CHAPTER 62

Rhyme wheeled back and forth before the whiteboards in his parlor.

He glanced at the water main grid chart, which the DEP had just sent them via secure server, then back to the evidence. Water Tunnel 3 and all the branches were clearly diagrammed.

Ron Pulaski called, ‘We’ve got our Bomb Squad at the boutique and the restaurant. The army has their people at the third site — the Belvedere.’

‘Are they making a big scene?’ Rhyme asked, half-attentive. ‘Are all the lights and sirens going?’

‘I—’

Rhyme cut him off. ‘Is there any evacuation from downtown? I wanted the mayor to order an evacuation.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Well, put on the news and find out. Thom! Where the hell—?’

‘I’m here, Lincoln.’

‘The news. I need the news on! I asked you.’

‘You didn’t ask. You thought you asked.’ The aide lifted a chastising eyebrow.

‘Maybe I didn’t ask,’ Rhyme grumbled. The best ‘sorry’ the man was going to get. ‘But turn the fucking thing on now.’

In the corner the Samsung clicked to life.

Rhyme stabbed a finger at the screen. ‘Breaking News, News Alert, This Just In, We Interrupt This Program. Why aren’t I seeing those? … I’m looking at a fucking commercial for car insurance!’

‘Don’t use your arm for useless gestures.’ Thom changed the channel.

‘… press conference ten minutes ago the mayor told citizens of Manhattan and Queens that an evacuation would not be necessary at this time. He urged people—’

‘No evacuation?’ Rhyme sighed. ‘He could at least have cleared Queens. They can go east. Plenty of room on Long Island. Orderly evacuation. He could’ve arranged for that.’

Mel Cooper said, ‘It wouldn’t be orderly, Lincoln. It’d be chaos.’

‘I recommended announcing an evacuation. He ignored me.’

‘DEP’s calling,’ Pulaski said, nodding at the caller ID box on the main monitor over a worktable.

Rhyme’s mobile rang too. The area code was 404. Atlanta, Georgia.

‘It’s about goddamn time,’ he muttered. ‘You take the water people, rookie, and coordinate with Sachs. I’ll talk to our friends in Dixie. Let’s move, everyone! We’ve only got minutes!’

And he hit the answer button on his keypad hard, drawing another admonishing look from Thom.

CHAPTER 63

In his Department of Environmental Protection coveralls and hard hat, Billy Haven stepped into a cross street in Midtown, the East Side, and lifted a manhole cover with a hook, then descended partway and muscled the disk back in place.

He climbed down to a metal floor and began walking through the tunnel, under the shadow of a water main pipe glistening with condensation. This huge conduit ran from Water Tunnel 3’s main valve room, in central Midtown, to the three submains that supplied water throughout Manhattan and to parts of Queens. Approximately eighteen thousand households and businesses received water that passed through this pipe.

He switched the heavy gear bag from one hand to the other as he walked. It weighed 48 pounds. The contents were what he’d removed from the workshop on Canal Street: the drill, portable welding kit, electric cord and other tools, along with the bulky steel thermos. He didn’t have his American Eagle with him now. That part of the Modification was over with. No more inking with poison.

Though the Rule of Skin was still very much at work, of course.

He checked his GPS, made an adjustment and kept walking.

The plan for the Modification was complex, as befit a scheme delivered through an intermediary whom God Himself had picked.

The Commandments …

At the last scene, at TT Gordon’s tattoo parlor, the police would have found trace of explosives he’d intentionally planted and Lincoln Rhyme would immediately wonder about this anomaly. Explosives and poison? What was the relationship?

The Commandments speculated that Rhyme would then think: What if the poisoned tattoos were about something other than random killings by a psychotic?

They’d analyze the numbers in the tattoos and would come up with the flood in Genesis. He’d intentionally inked the tattoo artist in the Village with “the six hundredth” last, because it would have been too easy to find the flood passages in the Bible if he’d given them in proper order.

In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights …

So domestic terrorists had returned to plant bombs to re-create the flood and wash away the sin of this Sodom.

Rhyme and Sachs would brainstorm about where the bombs might be and realize that, yes, of course, they were in the batteries for the crime scene lights. Since they might go off at any time and it would take awhile for the Bomb Squad to break through the sealed cases and render-safe, or extract the IEDs, the Department of Environmental Protection would take the drastic but necessary step of shutting the massive gates of Water Tunnel 3’s Midtown valve, squelching the supply of water flowing to the pipe Billy was now walking beside.

As soon as that happened the pressure in the pipe would drop to nearly nothing.

Which would allow him to drill a one-thirty-second-inch hole through the iron — a feat impossible when the line was active because the pressure would force the water out of the hole at the speed and with the cutting force of an industrial laser.

With the pressure off he could then inject into the water supply pipe what he’d brought with him here, in the metal thermos. The last poison of the Modification.

Botulinum, a neurotoxin produced by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum, is the most poisonous substance on earth. A half teaspoon could easily kill the entire population of the United States.

While it is generally very difficult to come by the more toxic substances in the world — say, radioactive poisons such as polonium and plutonium — botulinum is surprisingly available.

And we have vanity to thank for that.

The bacteria are the basis for Botox, a muscle relaxant to relieve spasticity. It’s mostly known, though, for cosmetic treatments to smooth skin (its toxic qualities inhibit a neurotransmitter that creates wrinkles).

The stockpiles of the spores are carefully guarded but Billy had located a source and broken into a cosmetic surgical supply company in the Midwest. In addition to a good selection of drugs and medical gear, he’d managed to steal enough spores to create a botulinum factory, which had been silently — and airlessly — producing a stockpile of the bacteria and the toxin and more spores.

The idea of weaponizing such a delightfully deadly substance was hardly original, of course. But no one had ever done so before — for a very simple reason. Delivery was nearly impossible. The toxin must be ingested or inhaled or enter the body through mucous membranes or open wounds. Contact with skin alone is not enough. Since it is very difficult to deliver a large amount of aerosol toxin, that meant an attack would have to be via food or water.

But salt, heat, alkaline substances and oxygen can kill the bacteria. So will chlorine, which is added to New York City’s water supply, along with the anti-tooth-cavity additive fluoride, orthophosphate to counterbalance lead contamination and hydroxide to increase the alkalinity of the supply.

Billy, however, had learned to grow a concentrated form of botulinum that was resistant to chlorine. Yes, some of the toxin he injected into the water supply would be destroyed, or its deadly effects dimmed, but the estimate was that enough would survive and be carried to households throughout Midtown and lower Manhattan and much of Queens. The death toll would probably be four thousand or so; the sick and severely injured would be many times that.

One group would be particularly hard hit: children. Infant botulism poisoning occurred with some frequency (often children younger than twelve months who’d eaten honey in which spores naturally resided). Billy had considered their deaths and he didn’t feel troubled by them. This was a war, after all. Sacrifices had to be made.

The city would react quickly, of course, with the Health Department and Homeland Security racing to find the source of the illness. There’d be some delay as officials thought chemical nerve agents — the symptoms are similar — and with some luck medical workers would start injecting atropine and pralidoxime, which actually increase botulism’s lethal strength. Some would diagnose myasthenia gravis. But then would come the serum and stool tests and finally mass spectrometry would confirm what the disease truly was.

By then, of course, the damage would be done.

A secondary consequence, which would cause even more extensive, if less lethal, damage was also predicted by the Modification: The city would soon find the source of the toxin but wouldn’t know how far-flung the poisoning was. Was the Bronx in danger next? New Jersey or Connecticut?

The only thing the authorities could do — the utterly incompetent city, state and federal governments — was shut down the entire water system. New York City, not a drop to drink, not a drop to carry away sewage. Or clean. Or generate electricity (most of the city’s power came from electric generator plants whose turbines used steam). The East River and the Hudson would become a Ganges, a source of bathing, waste and drinking water … and disease.

A plague, not a flood, would destroy the city.

But the plan’s success depended on the one remaining key factor: closing the Midtown valve to allow Billy to inject the poison. If that didn’t happen, the Modification would fail. The upstream reservoirs and aqueducts — easily accessible — were monitored in real time for any kind of toxins; the plan required that the poison had to be introduced into the supply here, south of Central Park, where it was theoretically impossible to taint the system and was therefore not guarded.

Billy now checked his location. Yes. He was close to the best spot to drill into the pipe.

But he needed confirmation that the water supply had been shut down.

Come on, he thought, come on …

Impatient.

Timing was everything.

Finally his phone hummed with a message. He looked down. Aunt Harriet. She’d sent him a link. He tapped the screen and turned the phone sideways to read the article. The story was time-stamped one minute ago.

Good. Time to finish up and say goodbye to New York City.

CHAPTER 64

Amelia Sachs was pounding her Ford Torino toward Midtown.

She’d blown seven red lights after leaving Rhyme’s. Only one slowed her down. The angry horn blasts and stabbing fingers were not even memories.

Times Square was around her, the huge planes of high-def video billboards, the preoccupied locals and the marveling tourists, the timely Thanksgiving decorations and the premature Christmas ones, the bundled-up vendors, rocking from foot to foot to jump-start the circulation.

Bustling innocence.

She sped east to Lexington Avenue, then skidded to a stop as blue smoke from the tires wafted around her. It was here that she’d been instructed to pause and await further instructions.

Her phone rang and a moment later Pulaski’s voice was pumping through her earbud. ‘Amelia. I’ve got DEP on the other line. They’re checking … Hold on. The tech’s back.’ She heard some mumbling as he turned away from the speaker to a second phone. Then his voice rose. ‘The hell does that mean, “The sensors aren’t that accurate”? What does that even mean? And anyway it’s not my problem about the sensors. I want the location. Now!’

She laughed. Young Ron Pulaski had come into his own under Rhyme’s tutelage. A moment later he was back with her. ‘I don’t know what the problem is, Amelia. They’re— Wait. I’m getting something now.’ The voice faded again. ‘Okay, okay.’

Looking around the streets. Innocence, she thought again. Businesspeople, shoppers, tourists, kids, musicians, hawkers, hustlers, street people — the astonishing, unique mix of humanity that is New York City.

And under their feet, somewhere, one of the worst terror attacks in New York City history was being carried out.

But where?

‘Okay, Amelia, DEP has something for us. They’ve cross-referenced flow rates — I don’t know. Anyway, I have a location. An access room a quarter mile south of the Tunnel Three valve station. It’s at Forty-Fourth and Third. There’s a manhole about fifty feet to the east of the intersection.’

‘I’m close.’

She was already popping the clutch and skidding away from the parking space in the same way she’d arrived, though this time leaving the blue smoke behind her. She cut off a bus and a Lexus. They might have collided, avoiding her. She kept right on moving, headed south. Insurance issue, not her issue.

‘I’ll be there in one minute.’ Then corrected: ‘Okay, two.’ Because she was forced up onto the sidewalk again and braked to nudge a falafel cart out of the way.

‘Fuck you, lady.’

Unnecessary, she thought, since he’d escaped light; she might’ve knocked the cart on its ass. Had considered it.

Back on the street with a grind of metal versus curb. Then she was speeding on once again.

After Lincoln Rhyme had concluded that the unsub and his domestic terror group were planning on blowing up the water mains, he’d grown thoughtful. Then dissatisfaction bloomed in his face.

‘What?’ Sachs had asked, noting his eyes straying out the window, his brow furrowed.

‘Something doesn’t feel right about this whole thing.’ He zoned in on her. ‘Yes, yes, I detest the word “feel”. Don’t look so shocked. The conclusion’s based on evidence, on facts.’

‘Go on.’

He’d considered further, in silence, and then said, ‘The battery-bombs are packed with gunpowder. You know guns, Sachs, you know ammunition. You think that’d blow up iron pipes the size of the water mains?’

She’d thought about this. ‘True. If they’d really wanted to rupture the pipes they’d use shaped charges. Armor piercing. Of course they would.’

‘Exactly. He wanted us to find the bombs. And — with the Bible verses — wanted us to believe the target was the water mains. Why?’

They’d answered nearly simultaneously. ‘To shut down the supply.’

Shutting off the water flow by closing the main valves would be only temporarily disruptive.

‘Who cares? That couldn’t be the motive,’ Rhyme had said.

Then he’d offered: But what would make sense was to trick the city into shutting off the supply to lower the pressure. Which would allow their unsub to drill into the pipe and introduce a poison into the line. He’d then plug the hole; Rhyme had reminded the team about the welding material evidence found at the Chloe Moore crime scene.

And the poison, Rhyme had concluded, would be botulinum — since they’d found traces of the material from cosmetic surgical supply houses and the Botox syringes. Rhyme had thought the plastic surgery evidence meant their unsub was planning on changing his appearance. But it was possible too that the purpose of the break-in was to steal botulinum, whose spores were maintained by medical operations specializing in plastic surgery products and supplies. He’d decided botulinum had to be the poison; no other toxin was powerful enough to cause widespread devastation.

Rhyme had called his FBI contact, Fred Dellray, and City Hall and explained what he suspected. The mayor and police chief had in turn ordered the DEP to announce that it was shutting down the water supply for a few hours. In fact, they kept the system fully operational — which because of the pressure would prevent anything from being introduced into the pipes. The DEP would use the grid sensors to pinpoint any leaks, telling the NYPD exactly where the unsub had cut into the line.

As she sat impatiently behind the wheel of her car, the engine growling, Sachs’s phone rang once more. It was Rhyme. ‘Where are you, Sachs?’

‘Almost at the spot DEP gave us.’

‘Listen to me.’

‘What else would I be doing?’ she muttered. And concentrated on avoiding an idiot of a bicyclist.

Rhyme continued, ‘I’ve just been on the phone with the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. We conferenced — forgive the verb — with Homeland Security and the bio-chem weapons people at Fort Detrick. It’s worse than I thought. Don’t go into the access room. We’re getting a tactical hazmat team together.’

‘I’m here, Rhyme. Now. I can’t just sit around and wait. The unsub’s right underneath me.’

She pulled the muscle car up on the sidewalk, scooting pedestrians out of the way. They complied; she looked far too fierce to argue.

Rhyme continued, ‘I just realized that this isn’t ordinary botulinum.’

‘Now, that’s a phrase you don’t hear every day, Rhyme.’

‘It’s been modified to be chlorine-resistant. That’s why we found the undiluted hypochlorous acid — what he was using to alter the strain. We have no idea how potent it is.’

‘I’ll be wearing face mask and coveralls.’ She ran to the back of her car, popped the trunk and yanked out her crime scene kit.

‘You need full biohazard gear,’ he protested.

She hit speaker, set the phone down and called, ‘The unsub knows we haven’t cut the supply yet — the water’ll still be spurting out of the hole he drilled. He’s waiting for the valves to close but he’s not going to wait very long. He’ll rabbit, with who knows how much of that shit.’

‘Sachs, listen. This isn’t arsenic or snakeroot. You don’t have to drink it or eat it. One ten-thousandth of a gram in a mucous membrane or wound’ll kill you.’

‘Then I won’t pick my nose or scrape my knee. I’m going in, Rhyme. I’ll call when I’ve cleared the scene and got him in metal.’

‘Sachs—’

‘For this one I need to go in quiet,’ she said firmly and clicked disconnect.

CHAPTER 65

Amelia Sachs easily found where the unsub had gone underground: the manhole on 44th Street, near Third, which Pulaski had told her about.

She dug the tire iron out of the trunk of her Torino and used it to muscle the heavy metal disk up and then managed to push the cover to the side. She aimed her Glock into the pitch-black hole. She peered down, hearing a powerful hissing noise — the leaking pipe, she assumed. She holstered her weapon.

Well, let’s get to it. Go and go fast.

When you move, they can’t getcha …

Thanks to the recent medical procedures, she now felt lithe as a thirteen-year-old as she turned and began down the ladder.

Thinking: I’m in bright white coveralls, lit from above and behind.

A perfect shooting solution for him.

One way to put it. The other was: sitting duck.

Climbing into hell. Practically sliding down the rails as she’d seen sailors do on some TV submarine movie, going from deck to deck.

She hit the floor of the spacious tunnel — open and without any cover whatsoever. Natch. Drawing her gun fast, she lunged to the side, where at least it was darker and their unsub would have a harder time placing a lethal shot. There she crouched and spun the muzzle 180 degrees, squinting to spot threats.

That she hadn’t pulled any fire didn’t allay her concern; he might still be near, aiming her way and waiting for any other officers to enter the target zone before he began squeezing off rounds.

But as her eyes grew accustomed to the dark, she noted that this portion of the tunnel was unoccupied.

Heart tapping, breath loud through the mask, Sachs peered in the direction of the hiss, which was now a piercing sound. She moved up to the wall on the other side of which was the access chamber where he’d drilled the hole in the pipe. She glanced in fast, low, in case he was aiming head or chest toward the doorway. All she could see in the one-second look was mist roiling in shifting curtains, pastel colors, like the northern lights. It was backlit by a muted white lamp — maybe one the unsub had set up to illuminate his drilling. The hypnotic swirls, beautiful, would be from the particulates of streaming water flowing from the pipe.

Sachs was reluctant to do a typical one-person dynamic entry, look high, go in low, two pounds’ pressure on a three-pound trigger. Shoot, shoot, shoot.

Not here. She knew she had to take him alive. He wasn’t operating on his own, not with a plan this elaborate. They needed to collar his co-conspirators, too.

Also, any weapons discharges might mean she’d end up shooting herself; the pipe and the concrete surfaces of the tunnel would easily send the copper jacketed slugs and fragments zipping in unpredictable directions.

Not to mention what a 9mm parabellum round would do to a vial containing the deadliest toxin on earth.

Closer, closer.

Peering into the wall of mist, looking for shadows moving, shadows in position to fire a weapon. Shadows charging out with a hypodermic syringe loaded with propofol.

For his final skin art session.

But nothing other than the shimmering particles of water vapor, refracting light so beautifully.

Into the chamber, she told herself. Now.

The cloud rolled closer and withdrew, surely from the breeze created by the stream of water. Good cover, she thought. Like a smoke screen. Sachs gripped the Glock and, with her feet in a perpendicular shooting position, not parallel, to minimize his target area, she moved fast into the room.

A mistake, she realized quickly.

The spray was much thicker inside and soaked the filter of the mask. She couldn’t breathe. A moment’s debate. Without the protection, she’d be susceptible to the botulinum toxin. With it, she’d pass out from lack of air.

No choice. Off came the mask and she flung it behind her, inhaling the damp air, which, she hoped, contained only New York city drinking water and not poison powerful enough to kill her in all of five seconds.

Breathing, breathing …

But so far, no symptoms. Or bullets.

She continued forward, swinging the gun from side to side. To her right she could see the dark form of the massive pipe; the puncture was about fifteen feet in front of her, she guessed; from a vague image of a thin white line — the stream of water — shooting up to the left and hitting the far wall about ten feet off the ground. The hiss grew louder with every step.

The whistle made her ears throb with pain and threatened to deafen; the good news was that it would also deafen him, so he wouldn’t sense her approach.

Smells of moist concrete, mold, mud. The sensation took Sachs back to her childhood, father and daughter at the zoo in Manhattan, one of the houses, reptile. ‘Amie, see that? That’s the most dangerous thing here.’

She’d peered inside but couldn’t see anything other than plants and rocks covered with moss. ‘I don’t see anything, Daddy.’

‘It’s a leeren Käfig.’

‘Wow. What’s that?’ Snake, she’d wondered. Lizard? ‘Is it dangerous?’

‘Oh, the most dangerous thing in the zoo.’

‘What is it?’

‘It means “empty cage” in German.’

She’d laughed, tossing her tiny red ponytail as she’d looked up at him. But Herman Sachs, a seasoned NYPD patrol officer, wasn’t joking. ‘Remember, Amie. The most dangerous things are the ones you can’t see.’

And now too she saw nothing.

Where was he?

Keep going.

Ducking and, with as deep a breath as she could take yet not choke on the mist in the air, she stepped through the cloud.

And she saw him. Unsub 11-5.

‘Jesus, Rhyme,’ she whispered, stepping closer. ‘Jesus.’

Only after some moments of hearing nothing but the wail and hiss of the water did she remember that the mike and camera were off.

The experts from Fort Detrick had helicoptered into town in all of forty-five minutes.

When the poison in question is sufficient to kill a high percentage of the population of a major US city, the national security folks don’t fool around.

Once it was clear that the unsub was not going to be shooting anyone, Sachs was politely but emphatically ordered out of the tunnel while eight men and women in elaborate self-contained biohazard suits went to work. It was clear from the start that they knew what they were doing. Fort Detrick, in Frederick, Maryland, was home to the US Army’s Medical Research and Materiel Command and its Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. In effect, if the prefix ‘bio’ and the words ‘warfare’ or ‘defense’ were linked in any project of any kind, Fort Detrick was involved.

Rhyme’s voice clattered through the radio. ‘What, Sachs? What’s going on?’ She was standing, freezing, on the slushy sidewalk near Third, where she’d parked her Torino.

She told him, ‘They’ve secured the botulinum. It was in three syringes in a thermos. They’ve got them in a negative pressure containment vehicle.’

‘They’re sure none got into the water?’

‘Absolutely positive.’

‘And the unsub?’

A pause. ‘Well, it’s bad.’

Rhyme’s plan to have the city announce falsely that the water supply was going to be shut down had had one unexpected consequence.

Unsub 11-5, wearing nothing more protective than Department of Environmental Protection coveralls, had been standing right in front of the hole he was drilling. When he’d broken through the main, the stream of water, like a buzz saw, had cut straight through his chest, killing him instantly. As he’d dropped to the floor, the water had continued to slice through his neck and head, cutting them apart.

Blood and bone and tissue were everywhere, some blasted onto the far wall, many feet away. Sachs had known she should get the hell out and let the bio team secure the scene but she’d been compelled, out of curiosity, to perform one last task: to tug the unsub’s left sleeve up. She had to see his body art.

The red centipede stared out at her with probing, human eyes. It was brilliantly done. And utterly creepy. She’d actually shivered.

‘What’s the status of the scene?’

‘Army’s sealing it — about a two-block radius. I got prints and DNA from our unsub and pocket litter and bags he had with him before I got kicked out.’

‘Well, bring back what you have. He’s not working on his own. And who knows what else they have in mind?’

‘I’m on my way.’

CHAPTER 66

The TV news was frantic but ambiguous.

A terrorist attack on the water supply in New York, improvised explosive devices …

Harriet and Matthew Stanton sat on the couch in the suite at their hotel. Their son, Joshua, was beside them in a chair, fiddling. One of those bracelets the kids wore nowadays, even boys. Colored rubber. Not normal. Gay. Matthew tried to frown his son to stillness but Joshua kept his eyes on the TV. He sipped water from a bottle; the family had brought gallons with them. For obvious reasons. He asked questions that his parents didn’t have the answers to.

‘But how could they know? Why isn’t Billy calling? Where’s the, you know, poison?’

‘Shut up.’

The simple-minded commentators on the media (the liberal cabal and the conservative in this case) were offering nonsense: ‘There are several types of bombs and some are calculated to do more damage than others.’ ‘A terrorist could have access to a number of types of explosives.’ ‘The psychology of a bomber is complicated; basically, they have a need to destroy.’ ‘As we know from the recent hurricane, water in the subways can cause serious problems.’

But that was all they could say because apparently the city wasn’t releasing any real information.

More troubling, Matthew was thinking, was what Josh was stewing over. Why hadn’t they heard from Billy? The last word from him: After they’d reported that the city had shut down the valves, he was going to start drilling. The botulinum was ready to go. He’d have the toxin in the water supply within a half hour.

The talking heads kept droning on about bombs and floods … which would be like some teenager’s pimple, when the true attack would be a cancer. Poison to destroy the poisoned city.

The stations kept repeating the canned purée of info over and over again.

But no word of people getting sick. Nobody retching to death. No word yet about panic.

Stealing the thought from her husband, Harriet asked, ‘He couldn’t’ve gotten the poison on him, could he?’

Of course he could. In which case he’d die an unpleasant if brief death. But he’d be a martyr to the cause of the American Families First Council, strike a blow for the true values of this country and, not incidentally, solidify Matthew Stanton’s role in the underground militia movement.

‘I’m worried,’ Harriet whispered.

Joshua looked her way and played with his homosexual bracelet even more. At least he’d fathered children, Matthew reflected. A miracle, that was.

He ignored both wife and son. It seemed inconceivable that the authorities had figured out the plot. The elaborate scheme — crafted and refined over months — had been as detailed as a blueprint for a John Deere tractor. They’d executed it exactly as planned, each step at precisely the right moment. Down to the second.

And thinking of time: Now it passed like a glacier. Whenever a new anchor appeared, a new man in the street began talking into an obscene microphone, Matthew hoped for more information. But he heard the same old story, recycled. No news of thousands of people dying in horrific ways dribbling from the predatory journalists’ lips.

‘Joshua?’ he asked his son. ‘Call again.’

‘Yessir.’ The young man fumbled the phone, dropped it and looked up, apologizing with a fierce blush.

‘That’s your prepaid?’ Matthew asked sternly.

‘Yessir.’

No testy retorts from Josh, ever. Billy was respectful but he had a backbone. Joshua was a slug. Matthew waved a dismissing hand to the boy, who rose and stepped away from the noise of the TV.

‘Water Tunnel Number Three is the largest construction project in the history of the City. It was begun—’

‘Father?’ Joshua said, nodding at the phone. ‘Still no answer.’

Outside the windows, sirens made up the soundtrack of the bleak afternoon. All three in the room fell silent, as if plunged into icy water.

Then an anchor girl was speaking crisply: ‘… have an announcement from City Hall about the terrorist plot … Investigators are now reporting that it was not a bombing that the terrorists had planned. Their goal was to introduce poison into the New York City drinking water. This attempt failed, the police commissioner has said, and the water is completely safe. There’s a massive effort under way to find and arrest the individuals responsible. We’re going to our national security correspondent, Andrew Landers, to learn more about the domestic terrorism movement. Good afternoon, Andrew—’

Matthew shut the TV off. He slipped a nitroglycerin tablet under his tongue. ‘Okay, that’s it. We leave. Now.’

‘What happened, Father?’ Joshua asked.

As if I know.

Harriet was demanding, ‘What happened to Billy?’

Matthew Stanton waved her quiet. ‘Your phones. All of them. Batteries out.’ He popped the back off his while Harriet and Joshua did the same. They threw them into what the Modification Commandments called a burn bag, even though you didn’t really burn it. You pitched it into a Dumpster some distance from your hotel. ‘Now. Go pack. But only the essentials.’

Harriet was saying again, ‘But Billy—?’

‘I told you to pack, woman.’ He wanted to hit her. But there was no time for corrections at this point. Besides, corrections with Harriet didn’t always go as planned. ‘Billy can take care of himself. The story didn’t say he was captured. It just said they’ve uncovered a plot. Now. Move.’

Five minutes later Matthew had filled his suitcase and was zipping up his computer bag.

Harriet was wheeling her luggage behind her into the living room. Her face was a grim mask, nearly as unsettling as the latex one Billy had showed them, the one he’d been wearing when he attacked his victims.

‘How did it happen?’ she asked, fuming.

The answer was the police, the answer was Lincoln Rhyme.

Billy had described him as the man who anticipated everything.

‘I want to find out what happened,’ she raged.

‘Later. Let’s go,’ Matthew snapped. Why was it God’s will that he ended up with a woman who spoke her mind? Would she never learn? Why had he stopped with the belt? Bad mistake.

Well, they’d escape, they’d regroup, go underground once more. Deep underground. Matthew bellowed, ‘Joshua, are you packed?’

‘Yessir.’ Matthew’s son twitched into the room. His sandy hair was askew and his face was streaked with tears.

Matthew growled, ‘You. You act like a man. Understand me?’

‘Yessir.’

Matthew reached into his computer bag, shoved aside the Bible and extracted two pistols, 9mm Smith & Wessons (he wouldn’t think of buying a foreign weapon, of course). He handed one to Josh, who seemed to relax when he took hold of it. The boy was comfortable with weapons; they seemed to offer a familiarity that soothed. At least there was that about him. Guns, of course, weren’t a woman’s way and so Matthew didn’t offer one to Harriet.

He said to his son, ‘Keep it hidden. And don’t use it unless I use mine. Look for my cue.’

‘Yessir.’

The weapons were merely a precaution. Lincoln Rhyme had stopped the plan but there was nothing that would lead back to Matthew and Harriet. The Commandments had taken care to insulate them. It was like what Billy had explained: the two zones in a tattoo parlor, hot and cold. They should never meet.

Well, they’d be in their car and out of the city in thirty minutes.

He surveyed the hotel suite. They had not brought much with them — two suitcases each. Billy and Joshua had moved all the heavier equipment and supplies ahead of time.

‘Let’s go.’

‘A prayer?’ Joshua offered.

‘No fucking time,’ Matthew snapped.

Clutching and wheeling their satchels, the three of them stepped into the corridor.

The good news about using a hotel as a safe house for an operation of this sort was that you didn’t have to sweep it down afterward, Billy’s Commandments had reported — the hotel politely and conveniently supplied a staff of folks to do that for you, disgusting illegals though they undoubtedly were.

Ironically, though, having had that thought, Matthew noted that the two women on the cleaning staff near the elevators, chatting beside their carts, were of the white race.

God bless them.

With Joshua behind them, the husband and wife walked down the corridor. ‘What we’ll do is head north,’ Matthew explained in a whisper. ‘I’ve studied the map. We’ll avoid the tunnels.’

‘Roadblocks?’

‘What would they be looking for?’ Matthew snapped, pushing the elevator button. ‘They don’t know us, don’t know anything about us.’

Though this turned out not to be the case.

As Matthew stabbed impatiently at the elevator button, which refused to illuminate, the two God Bless Them They’re White maids reached into their baskets, pulled out machine guns and pointed them at the family.

One, a pretty blonde, screamed, ‘Police! Down! Down on the floor! If we don’t see your hands at all times, we will fire.’

Josh began to cry. Harriet and Matthew exchanged glances.

‘On the ground!’

‘Now!’

Other officers were moving in from the doors. More guns, more screaming.

My Lord, they were loud.

After a moment, Matthew lay down.

Harriet, though, seemed to be debating.

What the hell is she doing? Matthew wondered. ‘Lie down, woman!’

The officers were screaming at her to do the same.

She looked at him with cold eyes.

He raged, ‘I command you to lie down!’

She was going to get shot. Four muzzles were pointed her way, four fingers were curled around triggers.

With a look of disgust, she lowered herself to the carpet, dropping her purse. Matthew lifted an eyebrow when he noted a gun fall out. He wasn’t sure what disappointed him the most — that she had been carrying a gun without his permission, or that she’d bought a Glock, an okay weapon, but one that had been made in a foreign country.

CHAPTER 67

Mention the word ‘terrorism’ and many Americans, perhaps most, think of radicalized Islamists targeting the country for its shady self-indulgent values and support of Israel.

Lincoln Rhyme knew, though, that those fringe Muslims were a very small portion of the people who had ideological gripes with the United States and were willing to express those views violently. And most terrorists were white, Christian card-carrying citizens.

The history of domestic terrorism is long. The Haymarket bombing occurred in Chicago in 1886. The Los Angeles Times offices were blown up by union radicals in 1910. San Francisco was rocked by the Preparedness Day bombing, protesting proposed involvement in World War One. And a horse-drawn wagon bomb outside J.P. Morgan bank killed dozens and injured hundreds in 1920. As the years went by, the political and social divisiveness that motivated these acts and others continued undiminished. In fact, the terrorist movements grew, thanks to the Internet, where like-minded haters could gather and scheme in relative anonymity.

The technology of destruction improved too, allowing people like the Unabomber to terrorize schools and academics and to evade detection for years, and with relative ease. Timothy McVeigh manufactured a fertilizer bomb that destroyed the federal building in Oklahoma City.

Presently, Rhyme knew there were about two dozen active domestic terror groups being monitored by the FBI and local authorities, ranging from the Army of God (anti-abortion), to Aryan Nations (white, nationalist neo-Nazis), to the Phineas Priesthood (anti-gay, anti-interracial-marriage, anti-Semitic and anti-taxation, among others), to small one-off, disorganized cells of strident crazies called by police ‘garage bands’.

Authorities also kept a watchful eye on another category of potential terror: private militias, of which there’s at least one in every state of the union, with a total membership of more than fifty thousand.

These groups were more or less independent but were joined by common views: that the federal government is too intrusive and a threat to individual freedom, lower or no taxes, fundamentalist Christianity, an isolationist stance when it comes to foreign policy, distrust of Wall Street and globalization. While not many militias put it in their bylaws, they also embrace certain de facto policies like racism, nationalism, anti-immigration, misogyny and anti-Semitism, anti-abortion and anti-LGBT.

A particular problem with the militias is that, by definition, they’re paramilitary groups; they believe fervently in the second amendment (‘A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed’). Which meant that they were usually armed to the teeth. Admittedly some militias aren’t terrorist organizations and claim their weapons are only for hunting and self-defense. Others, such as Matthew Stanton’s American Families First Council, obviously felt otherwise.

Why New York City should be a particularly juicy target Rhyme had never figured out (the militias, curiously, pretty much left Washington, DC alone). Maybe it was the other trappings of the Big Apple that appealed: gays, a large non-Anglo population, home of the liberal media, the headquarters of so many multinational companies. And maybe they felt the Rockettes and Annie carried thinly veiled socialist propaganda.

If Rhyme totaled the number of perps he’d been up against over the years, he supposed he’d rank anti-social personality disorder doers first (that is, psychos) and domestic terrorists second, far more numerous than foreign plotters or organized crime perps.

Like the couple he was about to speak to: Matthew and Harriet Stanton.

Rhyme was now on the tenth floor of the Stantons’ hotel, along with officers of the NYPD Emergency Service operation. ESU had cleared the building and found no other co-conspirators. Rhyme and Sachs hadn’t expected any. The hotel records indicated that only the Stantons and their son were staying here. Clearly there was one other perp — the deceased Unsub 11-5 — but there was no evidence of anyone else in New York. After Rhyme and Sachs had determined that the Stantons had been involved in the terror attack they and Bo Haumann had put together a tactical op to nail them.

The hotel manager had arranged for the elevators to bypass the tenth floor and had moved his staff elsewhere while the police evacuated the floor’s legitimate guests. Then woman ESU officers donned cleaning jackets, tossed their MP-7s into laundry carts and hung around the elevator until the family showed up.

Surprise …

Not a shot fired.

The Bomb Squad had cleared the room — no booby traps; in fact not much of anything left. The terrorists had traveled light. Sachs was presently running the scene there.

Lincoln Rhyme was now scrolling through his iPad, reading reports sent to him over the past half hour from the FBI based in St Louis, the closest field office to the Southern Illinois home of the Stantons and the AFFC. The group had been on the Bureau’s and the Illinois State Police’s radar — members were suspected in attacks on gays and minorities and of other hate crimes but nothing could ever be proven. Mostly, it was felt, they were bluster.

Surprise.

The authorities in the Midwest had already arrested three others within the AFFC for possession of explosives and machine guns without federal licenses. And the search there continued.

No longer in her crime scene coveralls, Amelia Sachs joined him.

‘Anything left behind?’ He looked at the milk crate she carried. It was filled with a half-dozen paper and plastic bags.

‘Not much. Lot of bottled water.’

Rhyme grunted a laugh. ‘Let’s see if our friends’ll be willing to have a tête-à-tête.’ A nod toward a linen room, where the Stantons were being held until the FBI showed up; the feds were taking point on this one.

They walked and wheeled into the room, where the prisoners sat handcuffed and shackled. The parents and son — their only child, Rhyme had learned — gazed back with a hesitant resolution. They were flanked by three NYPD officers.

If the Stantons were curious as to how Rhyme had figured out they were the associates of the unsub and that this was their hotel, they didn’t express any desire to learn the answer. And that answer was almost embarrassingly mundane, involving no subtle analysis of the evidence whatsoever. Unsub 11-5’s backpack, recovered beside his body near the water main pipe, contained a notebook called The Modification, a detailed list of steps in the plot to get poison into the New York drinking water. Inside that was a slip of paper with the address of the hotel. They knew the Stantons were staying there; Harriet had told Sachs this fact. So the couple and the unsub knew each other. The ‘attack’ at the hospital wasn’t that at all. The unsub had probably gone there to visit his ailing colleague, Matthew Stanton, in the hospital’s cardiac care ward.

On reflection, there were clues they’d discovered that might have led to the conclusion that the Stantons were connected. For instance, the writing on the bag at the Belvedere holding the implants said No. 3, suggesting that the attack on Braden Alexander was the third one. But if the assault on Harriet Stanton had been legitimate, the bag notation would have read No. 4.

Similarly, they’d found trace evidence of Harriet’s cosmetics in places where the unsub had been. Yes, he’d grabbed her in the hospital and there might have been some transfer of the substance, but it would have been minimal. More likely he’d picked the trace up by spending time in her company. Also, Rhyme recalled the back and forth of the bootied footprints at the crime scenes; that suggested that an accomplice had brought the lights and batteries in after the tattoo killings. A check with the hotel here revealed that the Stantons had been accompanied by their son, Josh, a young, muscular man who could easily have carted the heavy equipment in after his cousin had finished his lethal inking.

But sometimes fate short-circuits.

A slip of damn paper with an address — found in the perp’s possession.

‘You know your rights?’ Sachs asked.

The officer behind Harriet Stanton nodded.

His long face pale and with a matte texture, Matthew Stanton said, ‘We don’t recognize any rights. The government has no authority to grant us anything.’

‘Then,’ Rhyme countered, ‘you won’t have any problem talking to us.’ He thought this logic was impeccable. ‘The only thing we need at this point is the ID of your colleague. The one with the poison.’

Harriet’s face brightened. ‘So he got away.’

Rhyme and Sachs shared a glance. ‘Got away?’ Rhyme asked.

‘No, he didn’t escape,’ Sachs told the Stantons. ‘But he didn’t have any ID on him and his fingerprints came back negative. We’re hoping you’ll cooperate and—’

Her smile vanished. ‘But then you arrested him?’

‘I thought you knew. He’s dead. He was killed by the stream of water after he drilled the hole. Because the pressure was never shut off.’

Absolute silence descended. It was shattered only a few seconds later when Harriet Stanton began to scream uncontrollably.

CHAPTER 68

‘It’s over,’ Pam Willoughby said, practically leaping into Seth McGuinn’s arms.

He was at the front door of her apartment building in Brooklyn Heights. He stumbled back, laughing. They kissed long. The sky finally was clear and the incisive sunlight, ruddy from the afternoon angle, poured onto the façade of the building. The temperature, though, was even colder than in the past few days, when sleet pelted from the gray sky.

They stepped inside the hallway and then walked into her apartment on the first floor, to the right. Even a glance at the basement stairs, at the bottom of which Seth had nearly been killed, didn’t dampen her joy.

She was buoyant. Her shoulders were no longer knots, her belly no longer tight as a spring. The ordeal was over. She could return home, at last, without worries that that terrible man who’d attacked Seth would come back. According to Lincoln Rhyme’s message, the unsub was dead and his colleagues had been arrested.

Pam had noted immediately that Amelia wasn’t the one delivering the news.

Fine with her. She was still angry and wasn’t sure she could ever wholly forgive Amelia for trying to break up her relationship with her soul mate.

In the living room Seth pulled off his jacket and they dropped onto the couch. He cradled her head and pulled her close.

‘You want anything?’ she asked. ‘Coffee? I’ve got some champagne or, I don’t know, bubbly wine. I’ve had it for a year. It’s probably still good.’

‘Sure, coffee, tea. Anything warm.’ But before she rose Seth took her by the arm and studied her carefully, looking her over with a face of both relief and concern. ‘You all right?’

‘I am. How about you? You’re the one who was going to get a tattoo from that crazy guy.’

Seth shrugged.

She could see he was troubled. She couldn’t imagine what it had been like to be pinned down like that, knowing you were about to be killed. And killed so painfully. The news reported that the poisons the killer had used were picked because of their agonizing symptoms. At least he didn’t seem to blame her for the attack any longer. She’d been cut deeply to see him pulling away afterward. Walking away from her, not looking back … that was almost more than she could stand.

But he’d forgiven her. That was all in the past.

Pam walked into the kitchen and put water on to boil, readied the drip coffee-maker.

He called, ‘And what exactly did happen? You talk to Lincoln?’

‘Oh.’ She stepped into the doorway. Her face was grave and she brushed her static-clinging hair from her face, twined it into a rope and let it fall on her back. ‘It was terrible. That guy? Who attacked you? He wasn’t a psycho at all. He’d come here to poison the water supply in New York.’

‘Shit! That was it? I heard something about water.’

‘One of those militia groups, like my mother was in.’ She gave a wry smile. ‘Lincoln thought that the killer was obsessed with the Bone Collector. But, get this, it wasn’t that at all; he was interested in the attack my mother planned here years ago. He was trying to figure out how Lincoln and Amelia would conduct an investigation. Oh, he wasn’t very happy he missed that. Lincoln, I mean. He gets pretty mad when he makes mistakes.’

The kettle whistled and Pam ducked back into the kitchen and poured the boiling water into the cone. The crisp sound was comforting. She fixed his the way he liked it — two sugars and one dash of half-and-half. She drank hers black.

Pam brought the cups out and sat beside him. Their knees touched.

Seth asked, ‘Who were they exactly?’

She tried to recall. ‘They were with, what was it called? The American Family Council. Something like that. Doesn’t sound like a militia.’ Pam laughed. ‘Maybe they had a public relations team work on their image.’

Seth smiled. ‘You ever hear of them when you and your mom were hiding out in Larchwood?’

‘Don’t think so. Lincoln said the people doing this were from Southern Illinois. It wasn’t far away from where my mother and I were. And I remember my mother and stepfather would meet with people from the other militias sometimes but I never paid any attention. I hated them all. Hated them so much.’ Her voice faded.

‘But the tattoo guy, the killer, he’s dead and the others got arrested.’

‘Right. A husband and wife and their son. They still don’t know who the guy in the tunnel was, who was killed. The tattoo artist.’

‘You’re still not talking to Amelia?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m not.’

‘For now.’

‘For a long time,’ Pam said firmly.

‘She doesn’t like me.’

‘No! That’s not it. She’s just protective. She thinks I’m this fragile doll. I don’t know. Jesus.’

Seth put down the coffee. ‘Okay if we talk about something serious?’

‘Sure, I guess.’

All right, what was this?

He laughed. ‘Relax. I’ve decided we need to hit the road sooner. Right away.’

‘Really? But I don’t have my passport yet.’

‘I was thinking we could stick to the US for a while.’

‘Oh. Well, I just thought we were going to see India. Then Paris and Prague and Hong Kong.’

‘We will. Just not now.’

She considered this but then looked at his intense brown eyes, staring into hers. And she said, ‘Okay. Sure, baby. Wherever you are, that’s where I want to be.’

‘I love you,’ Seth whispered. He kissed her hard and she kissed back, embracing.

Pam sat forward, sipped coffee. ‘Munchies? I could use something. A pizza?’

‘Sure.’

She rose and walked into the kitchen again, opened the refrigerator door, pulled out a pizza and set it on the counter.

And sagged against the wall, feeling her gut churn, heart rate pound.

Thinking: How the hell did Seth know about Larchwood? She desperately thought back to their time together. No, I never mentioned it. I’m sure.

You need to tell Seth everything about your time underground.

No, I don’t.

Think, think …

‘Need a hand?’ his voice called.

‘Nope.’ She made noise, ripping the pizza box open, banging the oven door down.

This can’t be happening. There’s no way he could be involved with those people.

Impossible.

But Pam’s instincts, honed by years of survival, took over. She eased to the landline phone and picked it up. Held it to her ear.

Hit nine. Then one.

‘Making a call?’

Seth stood in the doorway of the kitchen.

Keeping a smile on her face, she turned, forcing herself to move slowly. ‘You know, we were talking about Amelia. I was just thinking. Maybe I will apologize. I think that’d be a good idea, don’t you? I mean, wouldn’t you, if you were in my place?’

‘Really?’ he asked. Not smiling. ‘You were calling Amelia?’

‘Yeah, that’s right.’

‘Put the phone down, Pam.’

‘I …’ Her voice faded as his steely dark eyes bored into hers. The same shade of brown. Her thumb hovered over the one button on the phone. Before she could hit it Seth stepped forward and pulled the phone from her hand, hung it up.

‘What are you doing?’ she whispered.

But Seth said nothing. He took her firmly by the arm, pulling her back to the couch.

CHAPTER 69

Seth walked to the front door, put the chain on and returned.

He smiled ruefully. ‘I can’t believe that I mentioned Larchwood. I knew you and your mom stayed with the Patriot Frontier there. But you never mentioned it. Stupid of me, a mistake like that.’

She whispered, ‘It was one of the things Amelia and I argued about. She asked if I’d told you about my life there. I said it didn’t matter. But really? I was afraid to tell you. And now … You’re one of them, aren’t you? You’re working with the people who tried to poison the water.’

He picked up the remote to turn the TV on, presumably to see the news. Pam took the chance to leap from the couch, shoving him back hard. When he stumbled back she sprinted for the door. But she got no more than two steps before he tackled her. She went down hard, her face bouncing on the wood. Pam tasted blood from a split lip. He grabbed her by the collar and dragged her roughly back to the couch, virtually tossing her onto it.

‘Never do that again.’ Leaning close, he dipped his finger in her blood and drew something on her face.

Whispering, he told her, ‘Body markings’re windows, you know. Into who you are and what you’re feeling. In some Native American tribes using paint — which is just a temporary tattoo — was a way to tell everybody what you were feeling. Warriors couldn’t express emotion through words or facial expressions — not part of the culture — but they could use painted mods to show they were in love or sad or angry. I mean, even if you lost a child, you couldn’t cry. You couldn’t react. But you could paint your face. And everyone knew how sad you were.

‘On your face, just now? I wrote the marks that mean Happy in the Lakota tribe.’

Then he reached into his backpack and took from it a roll of duct tape and a portable tattoo gun.

When he did this, his sleeve tugged up and Pam found herself staring at a tattoo. It was red. She couldn’t see it all but the portion exposed was the head and upper body of a centipede, whose all-too-human eyes stared at her just as Seth’s did now: The look was of hunger and disdain.

‘You’re the one tattooing those people,’ Pam said, her voice a frail whisper. ‘Killing them.’

Seth didn’t respond.

‘How do you know that couple? The terrorists?’

‘I’m their nephew.’

Seth — but no, not Seth; he’d have a different name — was assembling his tattoo gear. She stared at his arm, the tattoo. The insect eyes stared back.

‘Oh, this?’ He tugged his sleeve all the way up. ‘It’s not a tat. It’s just a drawing — water-soluble ink. The sort some artists use to do outlines.’ He licked his finger and smeared it. ‘When I was the Underground Man — out on the prowl — I’d draw it on my arm. Took ten minutes. When I was your friend Seth, I’d wash it off. It only had to be good enough to let witnesses see it and for your police friends — and you — to be happy that the new man in your life, me, wasn’t the killer.’

Pam was crying.

‘Lip hurt? You tried to run.’ He shrugged. ‘A busted lip is nothing compared with—’

‘You’re insane!’

His eyes flared and he slammed a fist into her belly. The room burst yellow and she whimpered under the pain. Controlled the nearly overwhelming urge to vomit.

‘Do not speak to me that way. Do you understand?’ He grabbed her hair and brought his mouth inches from her ear. He shouted so loud that her ears stung. ‘Do you?’

‘Okay, okay, okay! Stop please,’ she cried. Then, ‘Who, who are you?’ she whispered, but tentatively, afraid of another blow. He seemed capable of murder; his eyes were possessed.

He pushed her away. Pam collapsed on the floor. He pulled her roughly onto the couch, duct-taped her hands behind her and rolled her over on her back.

‘My name is Billy Haven.’ He continued to set out some jars and assemble his tattoo gun. He glanced at her and noted the look of utter confusion.

‘But I don’t understand. I talked to your mother on the phone, she … Oh, yes, yes: It was your aunt.’

He nodded.

‘But I’ve known you for a year. More.’

‘Oh, we’ve been planning the attack for at least that long. And I’ve been planning to get you back into my life forever. My Lovely Girl.’

‘Lovely Girl?’

‘Stolen from me. Not physically. But mentally. You’d been kidnapped by Amelia and Lincoln. By the wrong thinkers of the world. You don’t remember me. Of course you don’t. We met a long time ago. Ages. We were young. You were living in Larchwood, the militia run by Mr and Mrs Stone.’

Pam recalled Edward and Katherine Stone. Brilliant radicals who’d fled Chicago after advocating a violent overthrow of the federal government. Pam’s mother, Charlotte Willoughby, had fallen under their sway after her husband, Pam’s father, died in a UN peacekeeping operation.

‘You were six or so. I was a few years older. My aunt and uncle came to Missouri to meet with the Stones about an anti-abortion campaign. A few years later my uncle wanted to solidify the connection between the Larchwood militia and the American Families First Council, so Stone and my uncle arranged our marriage.’

‘What?’

‘You were my Lovely Girl. You’d grow up to be my woman and the mother of our children.’

‘Like I was some kind of cow, some kind of fu—’

Striking like a snake, he jabbed his fist into her cheek, bone to bone. She inhaled at the pain.

‘I won’t warn you again. I’m your man and I’m in charge. Understand?’

She cringed and nodded.

He raged, ‘You have no idea what I’ve lived through. They took you away from me. They brainwashed you. It was like my world ended.’

That would be when Pam, her mother and stepfather came to New York a few years ago. Her parents had another terror plot in mind but Lincoln and Amelia stopped it. Her stepfather was killed, her mother arrested. Pam was rescued and went into foster care in the city.

She thought back to the day when she and Seth had met. Yes, she’d thought he seemed too familiar, too nice, too infatuated. But she’d fallen hard anyway. (All right, Pam now admitted — maybe Amelia was right that, thanks to her early years, she was desperate for affection, for love. And so she’d ignored what she should have noticed.)

Pam now stared at the tattoo gun, the vials of poison. Recalled that his victims had died in agony.

What delightful toxin had he picked for her?

That’s what was coming next, of course. He’d kill her because, Lincoln had said, she might have to be a witness in the trial against the Stantons. And he’d kill her because their plan had failed and his aunt and uncle would be in jail for the rest of their lives.

He wanted revenge.

He now looked once more at the design he’d painted on her cheek in her own blood.

Happy …

She thought of the time they’d sat on this very couch one rainy Sunday, a rerun of Seinfeld on TV, Seth kissing her for the first time.

And Pam, thinking: I was falling in love.

A lie. All a lie. She recalled the months he’d spent in London, in a training program for an ad agency opening an office here. Bullshit. He was back with his aunt and uncle planning the attack. And, after he’d supposedly returned from the UK, she hadn’t thought anything his odd behaviors. Assignments that kept him out all hours, phone calls he never took in her presence, having to leave for meetings at a minute’s notice, never taking her to meet his co-workers, never inviting her to the office. How they’d communicate through brief texts, not phone calls. But she hadn’t been suspicious. She loved him, and Seth would never have done anything to hurt her.

She forced the crying to stop. This was easier than she’d thought. Anger froze the tears.

Seth … Billy began filling the tube with a liquid from a bottle.

She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to die that way. Pain. Nausea, fire in her belly, stabbing up to her jaw, puking, puking, but finding no relief. Her skin melting, blood from her mouth, nose, eyes …

He was musing, ‘Feel bad about my cousin. Josh, poor Josh. A shame about him. The others? No worries there. My uncle was going to die soon. That was on the agenda. I was going to kill my aunt too as soon as we got back to Illinois. Blame them both on some homeless guy, an illegal probably. But once I saw the pressure in the pipes hadn’t been shut off, I knew Lincoln Rhyme had figured the plan out and I had to give them up. I left a note with the address of the hotel at the scene. That’s how Lincoln found them.’

He worked meticulously, filling the tube with the care of a surgeon, which he was, in a way, she reflected. The battery-powered tattoo gun was spotless. After he assembled the device he sat back and tugged her shirt up to below her breasts. He looked over her body, obsessed, it seemed, with her skin. She recoiled when he stroked her below the navel. As if the contact were not via his fingers but with the centipede’s crimson legs.

But there seemed nothing sexual about the touch. He was fascinated only with her flesh itself.

She asked, ‘Who was it? That you killed in the water tunnel?’

‘Hey, hold on there!’ Billy said.

Pam winced. Was he going to hit her?

‘I didn’t kill him. Your friend did. Lincoln Rhyme. He’s the one who made the announcement that the water pressure was shut off. But I was suspicious. So I got some insurance. I met a homeless man underground a few days ago. Nathan. One of the mole people. You ever heard about them? I thought it’d be helpful to use him. I gave him a pair of coveralls and did a fast tattoo of a centipede that matched mine, on his left arm. I knew where he hung out — near the Belvedere — so before I drilled into the pipe I found him.

‘I offered him a thousand dollars to help me drill a hole to help me test the water. He agreed. But’ — Billy shook his head — ‘I was right. The city was bluffing about cutting down the pressure. As soon as he drilled through the pipe, the stream of water cut him in half.’ He shivered. ‘There was nothing left of his head and chest. It was pretty tough to see.’

At least he had a spark of sympathy.

‘Knowing that that might’ve been me.’

Or maybe not.

‘That told me it was time to bail. The police’ll find out soon enough it wasn’t me but I’ve bought some time. Okay, time to bleed …’ Then he said something else. She couldn’t quite hear. It seemed to be ‘Oleander.’

He rose, looked her over. Then he bent down and gripped the button of her jeans. Pop, it opened and the zipper came down.

No, no, he wasn’t going to take her. She’d rip his precious skin off with her teeth before he got close. Never.

With a fast sweep, down came the denim.

She tensed, ready to attack.

But he didn’t touch her there. He brushed the smooth flesh of her thighs. He was interested only in finding an appropriate part of her body on which to tattoo his deadly message, it seemed.

‘Nice, nice …’

Pam recalled Amelia talking about the code the killer was tattooing onto his victims. And she wondered what message he was going to leave on her body.

He picked up the gun and turned it on.

Bzzzz.

He touched it to her skin. The sensation was a tickle.

Then came the pain.

CHAPTER 70

The point of the American Families First Council attack was now clear.

Among the documents in the dead unsub’s pocket, in addition to the name of the Stantons’ hotel, Sachs had found a rambling letter.

It reminded Rhyme of the Unabomber’s manifesto — a diatribe against modern society. The difference, though, was that the unsub’s screed didn’t offer up the AFFC’s own racist and fundamentalist views; just the opposite, in fact. The document, intended to be found by the police after the citywide poisoning, purported to be written by the enemy — some unnamed coalition of black and Latino activists, affiliated with Muslim fundamentalists, all of whom were taking credit for the poisoning of New York City to get even with the white capitalist oppressors. The statement called for an uprising against them, proclaiming that the poison attack was just the start.

Characterizing the attack in this way was rather clever, Rhyme decided. It would take suspicion off the AFFC and would galvanize sentiment against the council’s enemies. It would also cause immeasurable damage to the Sodom of New York City, bastion of globalization, mixed races and liberalism.

Rhyme suspected there was more at work as well. ‘Power play within the militia movement? If word gets around that AFFC pulled this off, their stock would rise through the roof.’

A call came in from the federal building in Manhattan.

‘The Stantons are not doin’ the talkie-talkie, Lincoln,’ said Fred Dellray, the FBI agent who was running the federal side of the attempted attack. The couple and their son were now in federal custody but apparently not — to translate Dellray’s distinctive lingo — cooperating at all.

‘Well, sweat ’em or something, Fred. I want to know who the hell our unsub was. Prints came back negative and he wasn’t in CODIS.’

‘I saw those pictures of your boy in the tunnel, after the run-in with the H two Oh. My, my, that was a Breaking Bad moment, no? How fast they think that water was going?’

He was on speaker and, from a nearby evidence table, Sachs called, ‘They don’t know, Fred, but after it cut him in half it also cut through a concrete wall and a steam pipe on the other side. I had to haul ass out of there ’fore I got scalded.’

‘You catch anything helpful in the tunnel?’

‘Got a few things, not much. It was pretty much toast. Well, more oatmeal than toast, what with the steam and water.’

She explained about the letter, intended to start a race riot.

The agent sighed. ‘Just when you think the world’s a-changin’ …’

‘We’ll work up the evidence, Fred, and be in touch.’

‘Thanks mightily.’

They disconnected and Sachs returned to helping Mel Cooper analyze the trace and isolate and run the friction ridges from the Stantons’ hotel suite. Regarding the prints, though, only one set was on file, though they knew the perpetrator’s identity already: Joshua Stanton had a prior in Clayton County for assaulting a gay man. Hate crime.

Rhyme glanced up at the crime scene pictures, immune to the gruesome images. He looked once more at the stark tattoo, the centipede in red on the left arm. The eyes eerily human. It was, as Sachs had told him, very well done. Had he inked it himself? Rhyme wondered. Or was it painted by a friend? The unsub probably. Point of pride.

Sachs took a phone call.

‘No, no,’ she whispered, drawing the attention of everybody in the room. Her face revealed dismay.

What now? Rhyme wondered, frowning.

She disconnected. Looked at them all.

‘Lon’s taken a turn for the worse. He went into cardiac arrest. They’ve revived him but it’s not looking good. I should be with Rachel.’

‘You go on, Sachs. We’ll take care of this.’ Rhyme hesitated. Then asked: ‘You want to give Pam a call and see if she wants to go with you? She always liked Lon.’

Pulling her coat off the hook, Sachs debated. Finally she said, ‘Naw. Frankly, I don’t think I could handle any more rejection.’

CHAPTER 71

Apparently, though, Billy wasn’t going to kill her.

Not yet, at any rate.

It was ink, not poison, he’d loaded into the tattoo gun.

‘Stop fidgeting,’ he instructed. He was on his knees in front of the couch she lay on.

Pam said, ‘My hands hurt behind me. Please. Undo the tape. Please.’

‘No.’

‘Just tape them in front of me.’

‘No. Stay still.’ He glared and she stopped squirming.

‘What the fuck are—’

Another fierce slap. ‘We have an image to maintain. Do you understand me? You will never use the F word and you will never take that tone!’ He gripped her hair and shook her head like prey in a fox’s mouth. ‘From now on your role is to be my woman. Our people will see you by my side. The loyal wife.’

He returned to the inking.

Pam thought of screaming but she was sure he’d beat the crap out of her if she tried. Besides, there was no one else in the building. One unit was empty and the other tenants were on a cruise.

He was speaking to her absently. ‘We’ll have to go deep underground for a while. My aunt and uncle won’t give me up. But my cousin, Joshua? It’s just a matter of time until he gets tricked into telling them everything he knows. Me included. We can’t go back to Southern Illinois. Your friend Lincoln will have the FBI picking up all the senior people at the AFFC now. And he’ll suspect the Larchwood crowd again, so Missouri’s out. We’ll have to go someplace else. Maybe the Patriot Assembly in upstate New York. They’re pretty much off the grid.’ He turned to her. ‘Or Texas. There’re people there who remember my parents as martyred freedom fighters. We could live with them.’

‘But, Seth—’

‘We’ll lie low for a few years. Call me “Seth” again and I’ll hurt you. I can do tattooing work for cash. You can teach Sunday school. Little by little we can reemerge. New identities. The AFFC’s over now, but maybe it’s just as well — we’ll move on. Start a new movement. And do a hell of a better job. We’ll do it the right way. We’ll place our women into schools — and I don’t just mean church schools. I mean public and private. Get the kids young. Break them in. We men will run for office, low level, cities and counties — at first. We’ll start local and then move up. Oh, it’s going to be a whole new world. You don’t think that way now. But you’ll be proud to be part of it.’

He lifted the machine off her leg, looked over the work and returned to inking her.

‘My uncle was backward in a lot of ways. But he had one moment of genius. He came up with the Rule of Skin. He’d lecture about it all over the country — at other militias, at revival meetings, at churches, at hunting camps.’ Billy’s eyes shone. ‘The Rule of Skin … It’s brilliant. Think about it: Skin tells us about our physical health, right? It’s flushed or pale. Glowing or dull. Shrunken or swollen. Broken out or clear … And it tells us our spiritual development too. And intellectual. And emotional. White is good and smart and noble. Black and brown and yellow are subversive and dangerous.’

‘You can’t be serious!’

He made a fist and Pam cringed and fell silent.

‘You want proof. The other day I was in the Bronx and this guy stopped me. A young man, I don’t know. About your age. Black. He had keloids on his face — scars, like tattoos. They were beautiful. A real artist had done them.’ His eyes looked off slightly. ‘And you know why he stopped me? To sell me drugs. That’s the truth about people like that. The Rule of Skin. You can’t fool it.’

Pam laughed bitterly. ‘A black kid tried to sell you drugs in the Bronx? Guess what? Go to West Virginia and a white kid’ll try to sell you drugs.’

Billy wasn’t listening. ‘There’s been an argument about Hitler: whether he genuinely hated Jews and Gypsies and gays and wanted to make the world a better place by eliminating them. Or whether he didn’t actually care but thought that German citizens hated them, so he used that hate and fear to seize power.’

‘You’re holding up Hitler as a role model?’

‘There are worse choices.’

‘So? What is it for you, Billy? Do you believe in the Rule of Skin or are you using it for power, for yourself, your ego?’

‘Isn’t it clear?’ He gave a laugh. ‘You’re smarter than that, Pam.’

She said nothing and he dabbed the tears of pain off her cheeks. And she did know the answer. And something occurred to her, hit her like one of his blows. It had to do with the blog she and Seth had worked on together. She whispered, ‘Our blog? That’s the opposite of everything you’re saying. What … what did you create the blog for?’

‘What do you think? Everybody who posts a favorable comment is on our list. Pro-abortion, pro food stamps, pro immigration reform. Their day of judgment’s coming.’

There were probably fifteen thousand people who’d posted something on the site. What was going to happen to them? Would Billy’s followers track them down and kill them? Firebomb their houses or apartments?

Billy set the tattoo gun aside, smeared Vaseline on the ink on her thighs and blotted.

He smiled and said, ‘Look. What do you think?’

Reading upside down, she saw two words on the front of her thighs.

What the hell was he doing? What did he mean?

And he pulled his jeans down. She read similar tattoos on his thighs, in matching type fonts.

When read together:

‘We call them splitters. Lovers get parts of their names tattooed on each other. They can only be read when they’re together. It’s us, see? Separately, we’re missing something. Together, we’re whole.’ What passed for a smile crossed his sallow face.

‘Lovers?’ she whispered. Looking at his inking — it’d been done years ago.

He was gazing at her confused face. He pulled up his, then her pants, and zippered and buttoned them.

‘I knew someday I’d get you back.’ Billy was gesturing at the tattoos. ‘“Pamela”, “William”. Nice touch, don’t you think? Our names will be whole when we lie together to make our children.’

He noted her expression of dismay. ‘What’s that look about?’ As if speaking to a daughter upset about a bad day at school.

‘I loved you!’ she cried.

‘No, you loved somebody who was part of the cancer of this country.’ His eyes softened and he whispered, ‘What about me, Pam? The woman I’ve loved all my life turns out to be the enemy? They took your mind and heart away from me.’

‘Nobody changed me. I never believed what my mother did. What you believe.’

He stroked her hair, smiling, murmuring, ‘You were brainwashed. I understand that. I’ll fix you, honey. I’ll bring you back into the fold. Now let’s go pack.’

‘All right, all right.’

He pulled her to her feet.

She turned and looked into his eyes. ‘You know, Billy,’ she said in a soft voice.

‘What?’ He seemed pleased to note her smile.

‘You should’ve checked my pockets.’

Pam swung her right arm toward his face as hard as she could, holding tight, fiercely tight, to the box cutter she’d used to cut through the duct tape — the same as she’d carried in her hip pocket ever since those terrible days in Larchwood.

The blade connected with Billy’s cheek and mouth. Not like the slush sound of a stabbing in movies. Only the silent cutting of flesh.

As he howled and gripped his face, spinning away, Pam leapt over the coffee table and headed for the front door, calling, ‘Okay, there’s a mod for you, asshole.’

CHAPTER 72

Pam’s hands were slick with Billy’s blood, but she got the door open and stumbled into the front hallway of the building.

She’d get outside onto the street and start screaming her head off. Maybe there was no one to hear her pleas for help in the building. But there were plenty of neighbors.

Ten feet, five feet …

Yes! She was going to—

But then fingers grabbed her ankles and she was falling to the lobby floor, with a cry. Her head bounced on the hardwood.

The knife went flying. Pam squirmed around and faced Billy, kicking furiously toward his groin.

His face was a mess — the image both pleased and shocked her. The gash began below his eye and continued to the middle of his cheek. She’d hoped to blind him but he could see all right, it seemed. Still, blood poured from his cheek and bubbled from his lips and she knew the blade had cut clean through to the inside of his mouth. She couldn’t understand what he was saying. Threats, of course. Rage.

Blood flecked her jacket, her arm, her hand. The spray spattered her face.

The horrific expression revealed the pain he’d be feeling.

Good!

She gave up fighting. He was weakened but still much stronger than she was. Escape, she told herself. Just get the hell out!

Clawing at the floor, she managed to move a foot or so away from him, closer to the door.

But he stopped her and spun her onto her back, landing a blow in her solar plexus, knocking the air from her lungs again and doubling her over. She broke away momentarily — thanks to the slick blood, he’d lost his grip. She made it up on her knees. But fury possessed him. Billy planted his foot against the hallway wall and lunged forward, wrapping his sinewy hands around her throat. On her back again, gasping for air.

She kicked upward once more and connected, knee to groin. He gasped, inhaling hard, and began coughing blood. He reseated himself on top of her. His grip relaxed and he drew back and pounded her own cheek and jaw, sputtering words she couldn’t understand, flecking her with more blood.

She tried to kick again, tried to punch, but she could get no leverage.

And all the while she was gasping, trying to draw air into her lungs and cry for help.

But nothing. Silence only.

The gash on his face was ghastly but the flow of blood was slowing, coagulating around the wound, dark and crisp as maroon-colored ice. Now she could hear: ‘How could you do that?’ More words but they snapped and sputtered and grew unintelligible once more. He spat blood. ‘What a fool, Pam! You’re beyond saving. I should have known.’

He leaned down and fixed his grip around her neck and began to tighten.

Pam’s head throbbed even more, the agony increasing, as she struggled for breath. Trapped blood pulsed in her temple and face.

The hallway began to grow dark.

It’s all right, she said to herself. Better this than going back to the militia. Living the way Billy would insist she live. Better than being ‘his woman’.

She thought briefly of her mother, Charlotte, speaking to Pam when the girl was about four.

‘We’re going to New York to do something important, honey. It’ll be like a game. I’m going to be Carol. If you hear somebody call me Carol, and you say, “That’s not her name,” I’ll whip you within an inch of your life. Do you understand me, honey? I’ll get the switch out. The switch then the closet.’

‘Yes, Mommy. I’ll be good, Mommy.’

Then Pam knew she was dying because all around her was light, brilliant light, ruddy light, blinding light. And she nearly laughed, thinking: Hey, maybe I got that God stuff wrong. I’m looking at the glow of heaven.

Or hell, or wherever.

Then she felt weightless, light as could be, as her soul began to rise.

But, no, no, no … It was just that Billy was getting off her, rising, grabbing the box cutter and lifting it.

He was going to slash her throat.

He was mouthing something. She couldn’t hear.

But she clearly heard the two, then three, huge explosions from the front doorway of the apartment building. She saw that the sun was the source of the light: the sun pouring onto her west-facing building. And saw two silhouettes, men holding guns. Looking then toward Billy she watched him stagger back, stumbling, clutching his chest. Torn mouth opening wide.

He looked down at her, dropped the box cutter, settled awkwardly into a sitting position, then eased to his side. He blinked, surprised, it seemed. He whispered something. His hands twitched.

Then the officers pushed into the hallway and had her by the arms, lifting her to her feet and pulling her toward the front door. Pam shook them off, though, apparently surprising them with her strength. ‘No,’ she whispered. She turned back and kept her eyes locked on Billy’s until his gaze went unfocused and the pupils glazed. Inhaling hard, she waited a moment longer and then turned and stepped outside, while the officers advanced to Billy’s body, pistols forward and ready — which was, she guessed, procedure, even though it was clear, unquestionably clear, he was no longer a threat.

CHAPTER 73

The medics had finished tending to Pam Willoughby, who walked outside her town house onto the chill, bright street.

From a spot on the curb, where he sat in his rugged Merits wheelchair, Lincoln Rhyme noted that Amelia Sachs started to step forward, arms extending slightly — to embrace her — but then slowed to a stop. She eased back, lowering her hands, when Pam gave no response, other than a formal nod of greeting.

Rhyme asked, ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Getting by,’ said the somber-faced young woman — Rhyme could no longer think of her as a girl. He heard how she’d fought the unsub and he was proud of her.

For some reason Pam kept brushing at her legs — the front of her thighs. It reminded him of the compulsive way Amelia Sachs sometimes touched or scratched her own body. She noted him looking and stopped. ‘He tattooed me. But it wasn’t poison. It was a real tat. He had part of his name and mine on his legs, he did the other part on mine.’

Splitters, Rhyme recalled TT Gordon telling them. Lovers who mark portions of their names on each other.

‘I’m …’ She swallowed. ‘I feel pretty creepy.’

‘I know somebody who can get them removed. I’ve got his number.’

If TT Gordon knew how to ink he’d surely know how to de-ink.

Pam nodded and rubbed compulsively again. ‘He was telling me all these terrible things. He was, it sounded like he was planning to be a new Hitler. He was going to kill his aunt and uncle and start his own militia movement. You know, Mom wasn’t really all that smart. She’d ramble on and on and you couldn’t take her seriously. But Billy, he was in a different league. He’d been to college. He was going to start schools and indoctrinate kids. He talked about the Rule of Skin. I could see he was obsessed with it. Racism, pure and simple.’

‘Rule of Skin,’ Rhyme mused. It certainly jibed with the manifesto they planned to leave at the site of poisoning at the water pipe. He thought back to what Terry Dobyns had told them.

If you can find out why he’s so fascinated with skin, that’s key to understanding the case …

Pam continued, ‘And he’d been obsessing about me all these years.’ She explained about the betrothal, about Billy’s coming here a year ago to start planning his attack on the city — and his seduction of her. Pam shivered.

‘Do you want to get in the van?’ Rhyme asked, nodding toward the accessible vehicle Thom had driven here. Her place was sealed for the crime scene search and Pam was clearly cold; her nose and eyes red, fingertips too.

‘No,’ Pam said quickly. She seemed more comfortable with the sunlight, despite the frigid air. ‘You caught them all?’

‘Everybody who was here in New York, it seems,’ Rhyme explained. ‘Matthew and Harriet Stanton. Their son, Joshua.’

The search team had found a real ID on the unsub’s body. William Haven, twenty-five. A tattoo artist who lived in South Lakes, Illinois.

Rhyme continued, ‘We have people going through all of their documents now, notes, phones, computers. We’ve got a few conspirators in Southern Illinois but there’ll be others. The bombs weren’t set to detonate but they were real: gunpowder, detonators and cell phone triggers. Somebody who knew what they were doing put the IEDs together.’

‘If they were anything like my mother’s underground group, the Patriot Frontier, there’d be dozens of people involved. They were always meeting late at night, sitting in kitchens, drinking coffee, making their fucking little plans …

Lincoln?’ Pam asked.

He raised an eyebrow.

‘How did you know? About Seth? To send the police here?’

‘I didn’t know. But I suspected it when it occurred to me: How did the unsub know about TT Gordon?’

‘Who?’

‘The tattoo artist that you and Seth met in my lab.’

‘Oh, the guy with the weird beard and the piercings.’

‘That’s him. Billy broke into his shop, killed one of his associates. I think he wanted to kill TT but he was out. He might’ve found out about the tattoo artist some other way but that was the simplest explanation — seeing TT in my town house.

‘Since we learned that the motive for the group was domestic terrorism and that there was a tentative connection with you and your mother — the Bone Collector — I just wondered if it wasn’t too much of a coincidence that Seth had appeared in your life.

‘Of course, the unsub had the tattoo of the centipede. Seth didn’t seem to have any inkings; I’d seen him in a short-sleeve shirt. What to make of that? And then I remembered the waterproof ink — red ink — on one of the evidence bags. TT told us that some artists use washable pens like that to outline a tattoo first. Maybe that’s what he’d done — a temporary tattoo on his arm to trick us.’

Pam nodded. ‘Yes, exactly. He told me he’d draw it to make people think he was somebody else. Then wash it off when he was playing the role of Seth. It was a homeless man he tattooed with the centipede and paid to drill the hole. He was the one who died in the tunnel. He said he didn’t trust you to turn off the water pressure. He wanted to be cautious.’

‘Ah, so that’s who it was.’ Rhyme continued, ‘Then he broke into my town house and tried to poison me. We thought he was an expert with lock picks; there was no sign of jimmying the lock. But of course—’

‘He took the key to your town house off my keychain,’ Pam said, grimacing. ‘Had a copy made.’

‘That’s what I was thinking, yes. Was he the unsub? I couldn’t say for sure, of course, but I wasn’t going to take any chances. I called Dispatch and had some patrolmen get over here right away.’

Sachs said, ‘And the attack here yesterday. He faked it.’

‘Injected himself with a bit of propofol, then cuffed himself. He dropped the bottle of poison and the syringe on the floor and lay down to take a nap until the police showed up.’

‘Why?’ Pam asked.

Sachs added, ‘Wanted to keep suspicion off him. What better way than becoming a victim himself?’

Rhyme said, ‘And, I have to admit, our profilers contributed. Did some research that said centipedes in art and fiction represent an invasion of a safe, comfortable space. They lie in wait, invisible. That was Seth. Well, Billy.’

‘Sure was.’ Pam’s still eyes swiveled back to her apartment. She frowned, pulled a tissue from her pocket and licked it. She scrubbed away a smear of blood on her cheek.

Sachs, the lead investigator on the case, now that Lon Sellitto was out of commission, spent about twenty minutes debriefing the girl, with Rhyme nearby. They learned that Billy, with Pam in tow, had planned to escape to a militia group in upstate New York, the Patriot Assembly, which Rhyme and Sachs had tangled with before.

Ron Pulaski finished walking the grid in Pam’s apartment — even if you stop the perp in the most absolute sense possible, as here, you still go through the formalities. When he was finished he bundled up the evidence, signed the chain-of-custody cards and told Rhyme he’d get everything to the town house. The ME team carted away the body. With eyes cool as the air, Pam watched the gurney wheeled to the van.

Rhyme, then, was concentrating on Sachs. When she and Pam had been talking about what had just happened, the policewoman had occasionally tried to joke or offer words of sympathy. Pam responded with a formal smile that might as well have been a sneer. The expression cut Sachs deeply, it was clear.

A pause as Sachs stood, hands on hips, looking over the town house. She said to Pam, ‘The scene’s clear. Help you clean up, you want.’

Rhyme noted that she was hesitating, and the tone in her voice told him that she regarded this question as perilous.

‘Think I’ll just head over to the Olivettis, you know. And maybe sometime this week I’ll borrow Howard’s car, come over to the town house and pick up what’s left. That okay, Lincoln?’

‘Sure.’

‘Wait,’ Sachs said firmly.

Pam regarded her defiantly.

The detective continued, ‘I want you to see somebody about this. Talk to them.’ She dug into her purse. ‘This’s Terry Dobyns. He works for the NYPD but he can hook you up with somebody.’

‘I don’t—’

‘Please. Do it.’

A shrug. The card disappeared into her back pocket, where her cell phone rested.

Sachs said, ‘You need anything, give me a call. Anytime.’ A whiff of desperation that was hard to hear.

The girl said nothing but walked inside and returned with a backpack and a computer bag. White wires ran from ears to iPod and were tucked up under a bulky hat.

The girl waved in the direction of Rhyme and Sachs but to neither in particular.

Sachs stared after her.

After a moment Rhyme said, ‘People hate to be proven wrong, Sachs, even when it’s for their own good. Especially then maybe.’

‘So it seems.’ In the cold she was rocking back and forth, watching Pam disappear in the distance. ‘I broke it, Rhyme.’

It was moments like this when Rhyme detested his disability the most. He wanted nothing more than to walk up to Sachs and wrap his arms around her shivering shoulders, hold her as tightly as he could.

‘How’s Lon?’ Rhyme asked.

‘He came out of the crisis. But still unconscious. Rachel’s in bad shape. Lon’s son is there.’

‘I talked to him,’ Rhyme told her.

‘He’s a rock. Really come into his own.’

‘Headed back to the town house?’

Sachs replied, ‘In a bit. I’ve got to meet with a witness about the Metropolitan Museum investigation.’

Sellitto’s other case, the break-in at the museum on Fifth Avenue. With the detective in the hospital, other Major Cases officers were taking over. Now that the AFFC terror plot had been stopped, it was time to resurrect the politically important, if mysterious, case.

Sachs walked to her Torino. The engine fired up with a blast of horsepower and she peeled away from the curb, raising smoke whose blue tint turned violet in the red light from the low sun.

CHAPTER 74

Lincoln Rhyme wasn’t happy he’d missed the deduction about the identity of the unsub; it was a search of the body and Pam’s explanation that were the source of information about Billy Haven.

‘I should’ve guessed it, though,’ he said to Cooper and Pulaski.

‘What?’ Pulaski set down the plastic bag from which he’d been tweezing evidence and turned to Rhyme.

‘That Billy was somebody close to the Stantons. Harriet’s reaction? When Amelia told her he was dead? She got hysterical. Which should have told me she knew him well. Very well. The son too, Joshua — I thought he was going to faint when he heard. I could have deduced that even if the unsub wasn’t part of the immediate family, he was in the extended. We know he’s the nephew, we know his name. But get the rest of the details on Mr William Haven, rookie. Stat.’

‘Latin, from statim, meaning immediately,’ Pulaski said.

‘Ah, yes, that’s right. You’re a student of the classics. And, I remember, a student of crime films in which digressive banter is used to distract from faulty plotting and character development. E.g., those grammatically correct hit men you were referring to. So shall we get going on the task at hand?’

‘Exempli gratia,’ Pulaski muttered and began typing fast on his keyboard.

A few minutes later, he looked up from the computer screen. ‘Negotium ibi terminetur,’ he said with a tone of finality.

‘The job is finished,’ Rhyme translated. ‘More elegant to say, “Factum est.” Has a nicer ring. That’s the problem with Latin. It sounds like you’re chewing on rocks. Bless the Italians and Romanians for pulling the language out of the fire.’

Pulaski read from the screen. ‘Matthew Stanton was an only child. But Harriet had a sister, Elizabeth. Married Ebbett Haven. They had a son, William Aaron. Ebbett was an elder with the AFFC but he and his wife died when the boy was young.’ He looked up. ‘In the Branch Davidian standoff. They were there to sell guns to the Davidians and got caught inside during the siege.

‘William went to live with Aunt Harriet and Uncle Matthew. Went by Billy mostly. He’s got a record — juvie, so there are no prints on record; it was sealed. The case was an assault charge. Hate crime. Billy beat up a Jewish boy at school. Then used an ice pick and ink to tattoo a swastika on the kid’s forearm. He was ten. There’s a picture. Check it out.’

The tattoo was pretty well done. Two color, shaded, razor-sharp lines, Rhyme noted.

‘Then he studied art and political science at the University of Southern Illinois. Then, for some reason, opened a tattoo parlor.’

In Billy’s backpack were receipts for two apartments in town. One was in Murray Hill, in the name of Seth McGuinn — Pam’s boyfriend. The other, under the pseudonym Frank Samuels, was near Chinatown, off Canal Street. Crime Scene had searched both. Billy had largely scrubbed them but in the second place — a workshop — the teams had recovered equipment and a number of terrariums filled with the plants from which Billy had extracted and distilled the poisons he’d used in the murders.

These boxes and their eerie lights now sat in Rhyme’s parlor, against the far wall. Well, all but one. That was the sealed terrarium that had housed the botulinum spores. The bio-chem folks from Fort Detrick had decided it was best to take control of that one. Normally possessive of evidence, Rhyme had not made an issue of that particular box being handed off.

The criminalist finished logging the plants into evidence — noting the hemlock was particularly lovely — and rang up Fred Dellray, the FBI agent, who would be handling the federal side of the investigation. He explained what they’d found. The eccentric agent muttered, ‘If that don’t beat all. I wondered where Hussein’s WMDs got themselves to. And we finally found ’em about two blocks from my favorite Chinese restaurant. Happy Panda. The one on Canal. No, not the Happy Panda on Mott or the Happy Panda on Sixth. The original one and only Happy Panda. Yu-um. The jellyfish. No, no, ’s better’n you think. Okay, call me when you got the report ready to go.’

After he disconnected, Rhyme heard a laugh across the room.

‘That’s pretty good,’ Mel Cooper said, staring at a computer screen.

‘What?’ Rhyme asked.

Pulaski laughed too and turned the screen: It was the New York Post online edition. A headline over the story about the Stantons was Poison Pen.

Referring to Billy Haven’s murder weapon.

Clever.

As Cooper and Pulaski continued to analyze and catalog the evidence from both Pam’s apartment and Billy’s workshop and safe house, Rhyme motored back to the evidence table. ‘Glove,’ he called.

‘You want—?’ Thom asked.

‘Glove! I’m about to fondle some evidence.’

With some difficulty the aide slipped one onto Rhyme’s right hand.

‘Now. That.’ He pointed to the slim notebook titled The Modification, which contained pages of details on the poison plot: timing, victims to choose, locations, police procedures, quotations from Serial Cities, the true crime book about Rhyme and directions on how to ‘anticipate the anticipator’. The notes were written in Billy’s handsome cursive. Not surprisingly, given his artistic skill, the handwriting resembled that in an illuminated manuscript inked by scribes.

Rhyme had skimmed the booklet earlier but now he wanted to examine it in depth to search for other conspirators.

Thom arranged it on the arm of his wheelchair and, in a gesture at times awkward, at times elegant, but ever confident, Lincoln Rhyme turned pages and read.