The Skin Collector(Lincoln Rhyme)

Chapter 23





Lon Sellitto jogged into the main hallway of Upper Manhattan Medical Center. The elevator seemed sluggish – four people waited. Impatient patients, he joked to himself – and so he descended the stairs to the basement level, where Amelia Sachs had stopped the unsub from another attack. Stopped him with seconds to spare, it seemed. If Rhyme and Pulaski hadn’t figured out the target location the perp had been checking out earlier, they’d be running a homicide now, not conducting a manhunt.

His gold shield, on a lanyard, bounced on his substantial belly. His Burberry over his arm, Sellitto was moving fast and he was out of breath.

F*cking diets. Was there any one that worked?

Also, gotta work out more.

Think about it later.

Downstairs he entered the cardiac care unit and walked a good fifty yards before he found the room he sought. Outside were two uniforms, male, one Latino, one black. In the room, he observed a white-haired man in bed, lean, with a wrinkled – and unhappy – face. Sitting in the chair beside him was a handsome woman in her early fifties, he guessed. She was in a conservative navy suit and nearly opaque stockings, a bright scarf. Her long face was hollow and her green eyes zipped around the room uneasily. Then she glanced at Sellitto in the corridor and went back to perusing the patient. Her ruddy hands were kneading a tissue to shreds. A young blond man – resembling her slightly, son probably – sat on the other side of the bed.

Sellitto nodded to the uniforms and they stepped away from the door.

The detective asked in a low voice, ‘So. Detective Sachs?’

‘She stayed with the guard, the hospital guard, till the emergency room guys got there. Now? She’s sweeping the hallway and room where the perp attacked them, her and the guard, I mean. She already ran the scene where he was going after the vic, the woman.’ A nod toward the hospital room. Name badge: Juarez.

‘It was poison?’

‘Naw.’

‘Naw?’ Sellitto mocked.

The kid didn’t get he was being challenged and continued, ‘Naw. The perp threw this jar from a storeroom or something at her and the guard. Broke. He’s the one got hit with whatever crap was inside. He’d been on the force. Retired from the Nineteenth.’

‘Detective Sachs wasn’t hurt,’ his partner added. Williams.

‘What kind of crap?’

Juarez: ‘They don’t know. But the first report was that it coulda been acid or something like that.’

‘F*cker. Acid?’

‘Naw, it wasn’t. Just preservative.’


Sellitto asked, ‘Hospital’s secure?’

‘Lockdown, yeah.’

The final word of that sentence prompted a glare at Juarez. He got it this time. ‘Yessir. That’s right. But they’re pretty sure he’s in the building next door. Detective Sachs saw him get out through the access tunnel. Only one place to end up. There, the doctors’ office building.’

‘And ESU thinks he’s still there?’

Juarez said, ‘He’d have to be fast, real fast, to get out. Detective Sachs called it in right away. Had the place sealed two minutes after the attack. Possible he got out, Detective, but real unlikely.’

‘Two minutes.’ Sellitto brushed at his wrinkled tie, as if that would iron the cloth flat as steel, then forgot about it. Pulling out a battered notebook, he stepped into the hospital room.

He identified himself.

The man in bed said, ‘I’m Matthew Stanton. Don’t they have security here?’ His dark eyes bored into Sellitto as if the detective had held the door open for the psycho.

Sellitto could understand but he had a job. ‘We’re looking into that.’ Which didn’t really answer the question. Then he turned to the woman. ‘And you’re—’

The man said stiffly, ‘My wife. Harriet. That’s my son, Josh.’

The young man rose and shook Sellitto’s hand.

‘Could you tell me what happened?’ the detective asked Harriet.

Matthew rasped, ‘She was just walking down the corridor, coming to visit me. And this—’

‘Sir, please. Could I hear from your wife?’

‘All right. But I’m talking to my lawyer. When we get home. I’m going to sue.’

‘Yessir.’ An eyebrow raised to Harriet.

‘I’m, I’m kind of flustered,’ she said.

Sellitto didn’t feel like smiling but he did anyway. ‘It’s fine. Take your time.’

Harriet seemed numb as she explained that the family had come to town several days ago with their son and his cousin. It was a toss-up between the Big Apple and Disney. But New York, closing in on Christmas, had won. Yesterday, on the way to toy shop at FAO Schwarz, her husband had suffered what turned out to be a minor heart attack. She’d come to visit this morning and was here, on this floor, when she’d heard the policewoman calling out stop or something like that.

‘I didn’t know anybody was there. He came up real quiet. I turned around and, goodness, there was this man. Do you think he was going to, Detective? I mean, going to attack me?’

‘We don’t know, Mrs Stanton. The individual fits the description of a suspect in a prior attack—’

‘And,’ the husband said, ‘you didn’t warn people about him?’

‘Matthew, please. You can also look at it the other way. The police saved me, you know.’

The man fell silent but seemed even more furious. Sellitto was hoping he didn’t have another coronary.

‘What was this earlier assault?’ Harriet asked hesitantly. Her voice left no doubt what she was asking.

‘Not sexual assault. Homicide.’

She was breathing rapidly now and under the heavy makeup her face seemed to grow paler. ‘A, like a serial killer?’ What was left of the tissue disintegrated further.

‘Again, we don’t know. Could you describe him?’

‘I’ll try. I only saw him for a few seconds before he pulled a mask down, grabbed me and turned me around.’

Sellitto had been interviewing witnesses for decades and knew that even the best-intentioned remembered little or accidentally supplemented accurate observations with mistaken ones. Still, Harriet was pretty specific. She described a white man around thirty wearing a dark jacket, probably leather, gloves, a black or navy-blue wool cap, dark slacks or jeans. He was slim of build but had a round face – it struck her as Russian in appearance.

‘My husband and I went to Saint Petersburg a few years ago and we noticed that was typical of how young men look. Round heads, round faces.’

Matthew pointed out in a sneering tone, ‘Crime there too but only pickpockets. They don’t sneak up on you in hospitals.’

‘Higher standards, yeah,’ Sellitto replied. Then: ‘Or the guy’s appearance: maybe Slavic in general? Eastern European?’

‘I don’t know. I suppose so. We’ve only been to Russia. Oh, and his eyes were light blue. Very light.’

‘Scars?’

‘I didn’t see any. I think he had a tattoo. One of his arms. Red. But I couldn’t see much of it. He had the coat on.’

‘Hair?’

Harriet’s eyes scanned the floor. ‘He pulled that hat down pretty quick. I just couldn’t tell you for sure.’

‘Did he say anything to you?’

‘Just whispered to stop struggling or he’d hurt me. I didn’t hear an accent.’

And that was it.

Age, build, eye color and a round head. Russian or Slavic. Clothing.

Sellitto radioed to Bo Haumann, the head of NYPD Emergency Service, and the officer in charge of the manhunt. He gave the description and the latest information.

‘Roger that, Lon. We’ve sealed the office building. Don’t think he got out but I’ve got some teams canvassing the streets nearby. K.’

‘I’ll get back to you, Bo.’ Sellitto didn’t bother with radio code propriety. Never did. It wasn’t that rank had privilege; tenure did.

He turned back to Harriet Stanton and her husband, who was still glowering. Heart attack? He looked pretty spare. And had an outdoor-weathered face, so he probably got a fair amount of exercise. Maybe being in a bad mood was a risk factor for coronaries. Sellitto felt bad for Harriet, who seemed like a nice enough lady.

Since there didn’t seem to be any connection between the unsub and the first victim, the same was probably true now; he was hunting randomly. Still, Sellitto asked if she’d ever seen him before, or had any awareness of being followed prior to her visit to the hospital. Or if she and her husband were wealthy or involved in anything that might make them a target of criminals.

The last query seemed to amuse Harriet. No, she explained, they were just working-class tourists – whose vacation to New York had been ruined.

Sellitto took her number and the name of the hotel where they were staying and wished her husband a fast recovery.

Harriet thanked him. Matthew nodded gruffly, grabbed the TV’s remote control and upped the volume on the History Channel.

Then the would-be victim vanished from Sellitto’s thoughts as his radio crackled to life.

‘All units, report of assault on sixth floor of physicians’ office building, where search operation for unsub is under way. Next to Upper Manhattan Medical Center. There’s been chemical weapon release, substance unknown. Only personnel with bio-chem masks are to remain in the building.’

Sellitto’s thoughts tumbled. ‘Son of a bitch.’

Gasping, he ran up the hallway and out of the hospital, into the circular drive. He looked up at the office building, which was to his left. He began jogging toward it, pulling his radio from his belt. He made a call.

‘Bo?’ He was breathless. ‘Bo?’ he tried again.

‘That you, Lon? Over.’

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just heard. The assault. What happened?’

The former drill sergeant said crisply, ‘I’m getting secondhand reports. Looks like the perp tried to steal some scrubs in a doctor’s office on the sixth floor. An orderly spotted him and he ran. But not before he opened a bottle and spilled something on the floor.’


‘Maybe formaldehyde, like with Amelia.’

‘No, he said it was bad. People puking, passing out. Fumes everywhere. Definitely toxic.’

Sellitto considered this. Finally he asked, ‘Do you know what office? That he dumped the poison in?’

‘I can find out. I’m on the first floor, near the directory. I’ll see.’ A moment later he came back on. ‘There’s only one doctor on six. He has the whole floor.’

Sellitto asked, ‘Is he a plastic surgeon?’

‘Wait. You’re right. How’d you know?’

‘Because our boy wrapped his face in bandages and is strolling down the fire stairs right now with all the other patients you’re evacuating.’

A pause. Haumann said, ‘Hell. Okay, we’ll marshal ’em in the lobby, get IDs. Nobody with a Band-Aid on is getting out the front door. Good call, Lon. We’re lucky, we’ll have him in ten minutes.’