The Skin Collector(Lincoln Rhyme)

Chapter 21





As they eased along the wall, she asked the guard, ‘Where would you hide?’

‘He can’t’ve gone that way.’ Leron nodded toward a corridor to the right. ‘Dead end and no doorways to get through. Gotta be somewhere off this hallway.’ He gestured forward. She took the lead and they moved about twenty feet farther down the tunnel connecting the hospital proper to the office building.

He whispered, ‘There?’ The men’s and women’s restrooms were across from each other.

A nod from Sachs.

Leron continued, ‘You ladies got all those stalls for cover. I’ll take that one first. And—’

‘I take it and you wait here.’

‘I can back you up.’

‘No, if he sees we’re both inside and he’s someplace else, he’ll rabbit.’ She was speaking near his ear. He wore a pleasant aftershave. ‘If you fire, remember the tile.’

‘Got it. Amplifies the sound. One shot, we’re both deaf for five minutes. I’ve been there. That happens, we have to scan visually. We can’t hear him coming … That is, if I don’t hit him. I am not, by any stretch, Amelia, a bad shot.’

She liked him. ‘You’ve done this before.’

‘Way, way too many times.’

‘Draw,’ she said.

The Nano was in his hand, dwarfed and nearly invisible in the dark flesh. He had two rings: wedding and a police academy signet. ‘Gotcha covered. Go.’

She breached the women’s room.

No drama. There were only two stalls and the doors were open.

Then she was outside. Scanning. He nodded his all-clear.

The one-stall men’s room was even faster.

Outside once more, Sachs gazed at the dozen storerooms opening onto the corridor. Then noted that Leron’s head was cocked. He touched his ear and pointed to a doorway, about twenty feet away. He’d heard something. The door was marked with the word Specimens.

Leron whispered, ‘A scrape. In there. I’m sure.’

‘Any windows?’

‘No. We’re way underground here.’

‘Locked?’

‘Yeah, but that doesn’t mean anything. Anybody can get through these doors, you got a bobby pin. Women still use bobby pins?’

‘Sure, to pick locks,’ she replied.

She and Leron moved close. There was a rippled glass window in the door, and the guard ducked under to the other side as they flanked it.

You’ve done this before …

Amelia Sachs debated.

On the other side was most likely a perp they had to assume was armed – and at the very least in possession of deadly toxins.

Wait for full backup from Emergency Service? With bio-chem gear?

Debating …

Yes, no?

She decided. She was going in. Every minute the unsub could fortify himself behind barricades and rig traps.

But mostly, she was going in because she wanted to go in.

Had to go in. Thinking: Can’t explain it, Rhyme. Just the way it is.

When you move …

‘You back me up,’ she mouthed. ‘From the hall.’

‘No, I …’ But Leron fell silent, looking at her eyes. He nodded.

She gripped the knob, which turned. Unlocked.

Then pushing forward … The door ploughed open, revealing nothing on the other side except blackness. Sachs jogged left and dropped into a crouch, so she wouldn’t be silhouetted by the open doorway.

Then, a huge crash from the back left corner of the room.

Leron surged forward as Sachs gave a whisper-shout, ‘No!’

But the guard pressed through the door anyway, gallantly coming to a rescue she didn’t need, a rescue that was purely a diversion.

For what was coming next.

‘Look out!’ Sachs cried. Seeing something flying out of the blackness toward Leron. It glinted in the light from the doorway as it arched overhead. She knew the bottle contained toxin, more cicutoxin or maybe that zombie fish crap.

No known antidote …

‘It’s poison!’ she called and ducked instinctively. Leron leapt to the left but stumbled and fell on his back, hard. He grunted in pain.

But it seemed the unsub hadn’t been aiming for her or the guard directly. Of course not. Their flesh wouldn’t shatter the poison container; he’d tossed it high, at the ceiling.

Leron was directly under the bottle when it hit a pipe and shattered. The poison rained down on him. He dropped his Nano and began screaming.

By the time Sachs rolled to her feet, the unsub had pushed through a second door to the specimen room, thirty feet up the corridor. She heard his footfalls fading as he sprinted toward the doctors’ office building.

She turned back to Leron, who was moaning and wiping desperately at his face. ‘Water, wash it off … I can’t see.’

What the hell was it? She smelled a noxious odor, astringent.


Acid! It looked like parts of his flesh were melting off.

Jesus!

Sachs debated. Go after the unsub … or do what she could for Leron?

Hell. She grabbed her phone and called 911 again, reporting that the perp was escaping through the connecting tunnel to the doctors’ office building next to the hospital.

She then ran to a nearby fire station and yanked the hose off the rack, turning on the stream of water and spraying Leron’s face and chest, though this didn’t seem to offer much relief, to judge from his screams, which were far louder than the fiercely loud rush of water.

‘Nuh, nuh, nuh …’

Then the heavyset man was sitting up, waving his hands fiercely. ‘Enough, enough, enough!’

He started choking and Sachs realized she was firing the water directly into his face, half drowning him. She shut off the stream.

Leron rose to his knees, spitting.

His eyes were red, but he seemed otherwise all right – aside from the choking.

‘How are you feeling?’ she asked. ‘Are you burned? Was it acid? Poison?’

‘’S okay, ’s okay … I’m all right.’

Sachs squinted at the floor, the broken glass. She walked over to a shard that held a yellowing label.

Oh.

Leron nodded, squinting. ‘He threw one of them samples at me, a specimen. One of the jars, right?’

‘Looks that way. Probably formaldehyde.’

‘Stings, but not bad. You washed most of it off me.’

Sachs then scanned the floor and noted the tissue sample on the floor, near where Leron sat. She’d thought the unsub had thrown acid, which had melted off the guard’s skin. In reality, the flesh was what had been in the bottle.

Leron looked down too, prodded the lumpy tube of flesh with his foot. ‘Shit. That what I think it is?’

‘I’d say so.’

‘He threw a dick and balls at me? Motherf*cker. After you collar his ass, Amelia, I wanna piece of him.’