The Skin Collector(Lincoln Rhyme)

Chapter 14





Rhyme took in the bizarre beard, the steel rods in the ears and eyebrows.

Parts of tats were visible on the backs of Gordon’s hands; the rest of the inking vanished under his pullover. Rhyme believed he could make out POW! on the right wrist.

He drew no conclusions about the man’s appearance. He’d long ago given up on the spurious practice of equating the essence of a person with his or her physical incarnation. His own condition was the prototype for this way of thinking.

His main reaction was: How badly had the piercings hurt? This was something Rhyme could relate to; his ears and brows were places in which he could feel pain. And the other thought: If TT Gordon ever got busted he’d be picked out of a lineup in an instant.

A nod to Sellitto, who reciprocated.

‘Hey. The wheelchair thing I said? It wasn’t as stupid as it sounded,’ Gordon said, smiling and looking at everyone in the room. His eyes returned to Rhyme’s. ‘Obviously you’re in a wheelchair. I meant, hey, you’re the famous dude in the wheelchair. I didn’t make the connection before. When he’ – a nod at Sellitto – ‘came to my shop, he said “consultant”. You’re in the papers. I’ve seen you on TV. Why don’t you do that Nancy Grace show? That’d be very cool. Do you watch it?’

This was just natural rambling, Rhyme deduced, not awkward, I-don’t-want-to-be-with-a-gimp rambling. The disability seemed to Gordon merely another aspect of Rhyme, like his dark hair and fleshy nose and intense eyes and trim fingernails.

An identifying marker, not a political one.

Gordon greeted the others, Sachs, Cooper and Pulaski. Then he gazed around the room, whose decor Rhyme had once described as Hewlett-Packard Victorian. ‘Hm. Well. Cool.’

Sachs said, ‘We appreciate your coming here to help us.’

‘Like, no problem. I want this guy taken down. This dude, what he’s doing? It’s bad for everybody who mods for a living.’

‘What does that mean? “Mods”?’ Sachs asked.

‘Modifying bodies, you know. Inking people, piercing, cutting.’ He tapped his ear bars. ‘Everything. “Modding” covers the gamut.’ He frowned. ‘Whatever a gamut is. I don’t really know.’

Rhyme said, ‘Lon says you’re pretty well connected in the tattoo community here and that you don’t have any specific idea who it might be.’

Gordon confirmed this.

Sellitto added that Gordon had looked over a picture of the victim’s tattoo but wanted a better image; the printout hadn’t been that clear.

Cooper said, ‘I’ll call up the raw .nef files and save them as enhanced .tiffs.’

Rhyme had no clue what he was talking about. In the days when he worked crime scenes himself he used actual thirty-five-millimeter film that had to be developed in chemicals and printed in a darkroom. Back then you made every frame count. Now? You shot the hell out of a crime scene and culled.

Cooper said, ‘I’ll send them to the Nvidia computer – the big screen there.’

‘Whatever, dude. As long as it’s clear.’

Pulaski asked, ‘You seen The Big Lebowski?’

‘Oh, man.’ Gordon grinned and punched a fist Pulaski’s way. The rookie reciprocated.

Rhyme wondered: Maybe Tarantino.

The pictures appeared on the largest monitor in the room. They were extremely high-definition images of the tattoo on Chloe Moore’s abdomen. TT Gordon gave one blink of shock at the worried skin, the welts, the discoloration. ‘Worse than I thought, the poisoning and everything. Like he created his own hot zone.’

‘What’s that?’

Gordon explained that tattoo parlors were divided into zones, hot and cold. The cold zone was where there was no risk of contamination by one customer’s blood getting into another’s. No unsterilized needles or machine parts or chairs, for instance. Hot, obviously, was the opposite, where the tattoo machine and needles were tainted by customers’ blood and body fluids. ‘We do everything we can to keep the two separate. But here, this dude did the opposite – intentionally infected, well, poisoned her. Man. F*cked up.’

But then the artist settled into an analytic mode that Rhyme found encouraging. Gordon eyed a computer. ‘Can I?’

‘Sure,’ Cooper said.

The artist hit keys and scrolled through the images, enlarging some.

Rhyme asked, ‘TT, are the words “the second” significant in any way in the tattoo world?’

‘No. Has no meaning that I know about and I’ve been inking for nearly twenty years. Guess it’s something significant to the dude who killed her. Or maybe the victim.’

‘Probably the perp,’ Amelia Sachs explained to Gordon. ‘There’s no evidence that he knew Chloe before he killed her.’

‘Oh. She was Chloe.’ Gordon said this softly. He touched his beard. Then scrolled once more. ‘Well, it’s weird for a client to make up a phrase or a passage for a modding. Sometimes I’ll ink a poem they’ve written. I’ll tell you, mostly they suck, big time. Usually, though, if somebody wants text, it’s a passage from something like their favorite book. The Bible. Or a famous quote. Or a saying, you know. “Live Free or Die.” “Born to Ride.” Things like that.’ Then he frowned. ‘Hm. Okay.’

‘What?’

‘Could be a splitter.’


‘And that is?’ Rhyme asked.

‘Some clients split their mods. They get half a word on one arm, the other half on another. Sometimes they’ll get part of the tat inked on their body, and their girlfriend or boyfriend get the other part on theirs.’

‘Why?’ Pulaski asked.

‘Why?’ Gordon seemed perplexed by the question. ‘Tats connect people. That’s one of the whole points of getting inked. Even if you’ve got unique works, you’re still part of the ink world. You got something in common, you know. That connects you, see, dude?’

Sachs said, ‘You seem to’ve done some thinking about all this.’

Gordon laughed. ‘Oh, I could be a shrink, I tell you.’

‘Freud,’ Sellitto said.

‘Dude,’ Gordon responded with a grin. That fist again. Sellitto didn’t take the offer.

Sachs asked, ‘And can you tell us anything concrete about him?’

Sellitto added, ‘We’re not going to quote you. Or get you on the witness stand. We just want to know who this guy is. Get into his head.’

Gordon was looking at the equipment, hesitating.

‘Well, okay. First, he’s a natural, a total talent as an artist, not just a technician. A lot of inkers are paint-by-numbers guys. They slap on a stencil somebody else did and fill it in. But’ – a nod at the picture – ‘there’s no evidence of a stencil there. He used a bloodline.’

‘Which is what?’ Rhyme asked.

‘If they’re not using a stencil, most artists draw an outline of the work on the skin first. Some draw freehand with a pen – water-soluble ink. But there’s no sign of that here. Your guy didn’t do that. He just turned on his tattoo machine and used a lining needle for the outline, so instead of ink you have a line of blood that’s the outer perimeter of your design. So, bloodline. Only the best tat artists do that.’

Pulaski asked, ‘A pro then?’

‘Oh, yeah, dude’d have to be a pro. Like I told him.’ A nod at Sellitto. ‘Or was at some point. That level of skill? He could open his own shop in a blind second. And probably he’s a real artist too – I mean like with paint and pen and ink and everything. And I don’t think he’s from here. For one thing, I probably would’ve heard. Not from the tristate area, either. Doing this in fifteen minutes? Man, that’s lightning. His name’d get around. Then, look at the typeface.’

Rhyme’s, and everyone else’s, eyes slipped to the screen.

‘It’s Old English, or some Gothic variation. You don’t see that much now around here. I’d guess he’s got rural roots: redneck, shit kicker, biker, meth cooker. On the other hand, maybe born-again, righteous, upstanding. But definitely a country boy.’

‘The typeface tells you that?’ Sachs asked.

‘Oh, yeah. Here, if somebody wants words, they’ll go for some kind of flowery script or thick sans serif. At least that’s current now. Man, for a few years everybody wanted this Elvish crap.’

‘Elvis Presley?’ Sellitto asked.

‘No, Elvish. Lord of the Rings.’

‘So country,’ Rhyme said. ‘Any particular region?’

‘Not really. There’s city inking and country inking. All I can say is this smells like country. Now, look at the border. The scallops. The technique is scarification. Or cicatrization is the official name for it. That’s important.’

He looked up and tapped the scallops surrounding the words ‘the second’.

‘What’s significant is that usually people scar to draw attention to an image. It’s important for this dude to make that design more prominent. It would’ve been easier just to ink a border. But, no, he wanted cicatrization. There’s a reason for it, I’m guessing. No clue what. But there it is.

‘Now, there’s one other thing. I was thinking about it. I brought show-and-tell.’ Gordon reached into his canvas shoulder bag and lifted out a plastic sack containing a number of metal parts. Rhyme recognized the transparent container as the sort in which surgical and forensic instruments are sterilized in an autoclave. ‘These are part of a tattoo machine – you don’t call them guns, by the way.’ Gordon smiled. ‘Whatever you hear on TV.’

He took a small Swiss Army knife from his pocket and cut open the bag. In a moment he’d assembled a tattoo gun – well, machine. ‘Here’s what it looks like put together and ready to ink.’ The tattoo artist walked closer to the others. ‘These’re the coils that move the needle up and down. This’s the tube for the ink and here’s the needle itself, coming out the end.’

Rhyme could see it, very small.

‘Needles have to go into the dermis – the layer of skin just below the outermost layer.’

‘Which is the epidermis,’ Rhyme said.

Nodding, Gordon disassembled the device and lifted out the needle, displaying it to everyone. Resembling a thin shish kebab skewer, about three inches long, it had a ring on one end. The other end contained a cluster of tiny metal rods soldered or welded together. They ended in sharp points.

‘See how they’re joined together, in a star-shaped pattern? I make ’em myself. Most serious artists do. But we have to buy blanks and combine ’em. There’re two types of needles: those for lining – outlining the image – and then those for filling or shading. The dude needed to get a lot of poison into her body fast. That means he had to use filling needles after he was done with the bloodline. But these wouldn’t work, I don’t think. They wouldn’t go deep enough. But this kind of needle would.’ He reached into his bag once more and extracted a small plastic jar. He shook out two rods of metal, similar to his needles but longer. ‘They’re from an old-time rotary machine – the new ones, like mine, are two-coil, oscillation models. Was it a portable machine?’

‘Had to be. There was no electric source,’ Sachs told him.

Pulaski said, ‘I’ve been looking for portable guns … machines. But there’re a lot of them.’

Gordon thought for a moment. Then said, ‘I’m guessing it would have to be an American Eagle model. Goes way back. One of the first to run off battery power. It comes from the days when tattooing wasn’t very scientific. The artist could adjust the stroke of the needles. He could make them go real deep. I’d look for somebody who’s got an Eagle.’

Sellitto asked, ‘Are they sold here? In supply stores?’

‘I’ve never seen any. They’re not made anymore. You could get them online, I’d guess. That’d be the only way to find them.’

‘No, he’s not going to be buying anything that way, too traceable,’ Rhyme pointed out. ‘He probably picked it up where he lives. Or maybe he’s had it for years or inherited it.’

‘Needles’re a different story. You might be able to find somebody who’s sold needles for American Eagles. Anybody who bought those recently could be he.’

‘What’d you say?’ Rhyme asked.

‘What did I say?’ The slim man frowned. ‘When, now? Whoever’s buying needles for an American Eagle machine, it could be your perp. Don’t you say that? They do on NCIS.’

The criminalist laughed. ‘No. I was noting the proper use of the pronoun. Nominative case.’


Rhyme noted Pulaski roll his eyes.

‘Oh, that? The “he”?’ Gordon shrugged. ‘I never did very … well in school. Thought I was going to say “good”, didn’t you? Couple years at Hunter but got bored, you know. But when I started inking, I’d do a lot of text. Bible verses, passages from books, poems. So I learned writing from famous authors. Spelling, grammar. I mean, dude, it was pretty interesting. Typography too. The same passage in one font has a whole different impact when it’s printed in another.

‘Sometimes a couple’d come in and they’d want to ink wedding vows on their arms or ankles. Or crappy love poems they’d written, like I mentioned. I’d say, okay, dudes, you sure you want to go through life with “Jimmy I love you you’re heart and mine for ever” on your biceps. That’s Jimmy no comma, you no period or semicolon, Y-O-U apostrophe R-E, and for ever two words. They’d say, “Huh.” I’d edit anyway when I inked them. They’ll have kids and have to go to a PTA meeting, meet the English teacher. After all, not like you can use White-Out, right?’

‘And cut and paste would be really bad,’ Pulaski joked, drawing smiles.

But not from Gordon. ‘Oh, there’s a version of scarification where people actually cut strips of skin out of their body.’

Rhyme then heard a click in the front door latch and the door open – or, more accurately, the wind howl and the sleet clatter from the sky.

The door closed.

After that footsteps and a light, airy laugh.

He knew who had come to visit and shot a glance to Sachs, who quickly rose and turned around the whiteboard that contained the crime scene pictures of Chloe Moore and switched the high-def screens away from the images TT Gordon had been examining.

A moment later Pam Willoughby stepped into the room. The pretty, slim nineteen year old was enwrapped in a brown overcoat trimmed in faux fur. Her long, dark hair was tucked up under a burgundy stocking cap, and her outer garments were dusted with dots of sleet or snow, melting fast. She waved hello to everyone.

Accompanying her was her boyfriend, Seth McGuinn, a handsome, dark-haired man of about twenty-five. She introduced him to Pulaski and Mel Cooper, neither of whom he’d met.

Seth’s dark-brown eyes, which matched Pam’s, blinked when they turned to TT Gordon, who greeted the couple pleasantly. Pam had a similar reaction. Rhyme had seen athletic Seth in a T-shirt and jogging shorts, when he and Pam had been going to the park several weeks ago, and noted he’d sported no tattoos. Pam had none either, visible at least. The young couple now tried, unsuccessfully, to hide their surprise at Rhyme’s quirky visitor.

Pam detached herself from Seth’s arm, kissed Rhyme on the cheek and hugged Thom. Seth shook everyone’s hand.

TT Gordon asked if they needed any more help with the case. Sellitto glanced around the room at the others and when Rhyme shook his head, said, ‘Thanks for coming in. Appreciate it.’

‘I’ll keep an eye out for anything weird. In the community, you know what I mean? So long, dudes.’

Gordon stashed his gear, pulled on his pitifully thin jacket and headed out the door.

Seth and Pam shared a smile, looking after Gordon’s exit.

Sachs said, ‘Hey, Pam. I think Seth needs a ’stache.’

The clean-cut young man nodded, frowning. ‘Hell, I can outdo him. I’d go with braids.’

Pam said, ‘Naw, get pierced. That way we can swap earrings.’

Seth said he had to be going; a deadline for his ad agency loomed. He kissed Pam, chastely, as if Rhyme and Sachs were the girl’s real parents. Then he nodded a farewell to the others. At the archway he turned and reminded Sachs and Rhyme that his parents would like to have lunch or dinner with them soon. Rhyme generally disliked such socializing but since Pam was, in effect, family, he’d agreed to go. And reminded himself to endure the pleasantries and mundane conversation with a smile.

‘Next week?’ Rhyme asked.

‘Perfect. Dad’s back from Hong Kong.’ He added that his father had found a copy of Rhyme’s book about New York crime scenes. ‘Any chance of an autograph?’

Recent surgery had improved Rhyme’s muscle control to the point that he actually could write his name – not as clearly as before the accident but as good as any doctor writing a prescription. ‘Delighted to.’

When he’d left, Pam pulled off her jacket and hat, set them on a chair, asked Sachs, ‘So, your message? What’s up?’

The detective nodded toward the sitting room, across the hall from Rhyme’s lab/parlor, and said, ‘How ’bout we go in there.’