The Skin Collector(Lincoln Rhyme)

Chapter 29





Lights flashed off the falling sleet, off the encrusted piles of old snow, off the wet asphalt.

Blue glows, white, red. Pulsing. Urgent.

Amelia Sachs was climbing out of her maroon Torino, parked beside several ambulances, though several ambulances weren’t necessary. None were. The only required medical vehicle was the city morgue van. The first responders to this scene reported that Samantha Levine, the unsub’s second victim, was deceased, declared dead at the scene.

Poison again, of course. That was the preliminary, from the first responders, but there was no doubt this was Unsub 11-5’s work.

When she hadn’t returned to the table of the chic restaurant Provence2, her friends had become concerned. A search of the restroom revealed an access door, which was slightly askew. A waiter had pulled it open, stuck his head in, gasped and vomited.

Sachs stood on the street, looking over the restaurant and the assembling vehicles. Lon Sellitto walked up. ‘Amelia.’

She shook her head. ‘We stopped him at the hospital this morning and he got somebody else. Right away. Telling us basically: “F*ck you.”’

Diners were settling checks and leaving and the staff were looking about as thrilled as you could imagine, upon learning that a patron had been abducted in the restroom and dragged into a tunnel beneath their establishment and murdered.

It was only a matter of time, Sachs guessed, before Provence2 would be shuttered. It was as if the restaurant itself were a second victim. She supposed the boutique on Elizabeth Street too would be out of business soon.

‘I’ll start canvassing,’ the big detective muttered and ambled off, digging a notebook from his pocket.

The crime scene bus arrived and nosed up to the curb. Sachs waved to the CS techs who were climbing out. Jean Eagleston was the lead, the woman who’d worked the Chloe Moore scene in SoHo – only yesterday though it seemed like last month. She had a new partner, a slim Latino who had calm but probing eyes – hinting that he was perfect for crime scene work. Sachs walked up to them. ‘Same procedure. I’ll go in first, process the body, walk the grid. You can handle the restroom where he snatched her, any exit routes.’

Eagleston said, ‘Will do, Amelia.’ She nodded and Sachs went to the back of the CS vehicle to suit up in the Tyvek, booties, hood and gloves. The N95 respirator too. Remembering that, whatever happened, she should leave it in place.

Rust …

Goggles this time.

As she was stepping into the legs of the coveralls, she happened to glance up the street. On the corner, the same side of the street as the restaurant, was a man in a dark jacket that was similar to what the unsub had worn at the hospital for the attempted assault on Harriet Stanton – though he was in a baseball cap, not a stocking. He was on a phone and paying only moderate attention to the scene. Still, there was something artificial about his pose.

Could it be the unsub, back again, as he’d done in SoHo?

She looked away quickly and continued to gown herself, trying to act casual.

It wasn’t common for a perp to return to the scene of the crime – that was a cliché helpful only in bad murder mysteries and made-for-TV movies – but it did happen sometimes. Particularly perps who weren’t professional criminals but psychopaths, whose motives for murder were rooted in mental or emotional disturbance, which pretty much described Unsub 11-5.

On the pretext of getting a new pair of gloves from the far side of the bus, Sachs eased up to a detective she knew, a sharp, streetwise officer who’d recently been assigned to Midtown North. Nancy Simpson was handling crowd control detail and directing diners out of the immediate scene as they exited the restaurant.

‘Hey,’ she said, ‘Nancy.’

‘This guy again?’ the woman muttered. She was in an NYPD windbreaker, collar pulled high against the weather. Sachs liked the stylish beret, in dark green.

‘Looks like it.’

‘Got people scared all over town,’ Simpson told her. ‘Reports of intruders in basements’re up a hundred percent. None of ’em pan out, but we send Patrol anyway. Tying up everything.’ She added with a wink. ‘And nobody’s washing their clothes. Afraid of the laundry room.’


‘We may have a situation, Nancy.’

‘Go ahead.’

‘Don’t look behind you.’

‘I won’t. Why?’

‘We’ve got a fish I’m interested in. A guy on the corner. This block. He’s in a jacket, baseball cap. I want you to get close but don’t see him. You know what I mean?’

‘Sure. I saw somebody. Peripheral. Wondered.’

‘Get close. And then stop him. Keep your weapon ready. There’s an off-chance it might be the perp.’

‘Who did this?’

‘Who did this. Not likely, I’m saying. But maybe.’

‘How should I get close?’

‘You’re checking traffic, you’re on your phone, pretending you’re on your phone, I mean.’

‘Arrest?’

‘Just ID at this point. I’ll come up behind. I’ll have my weapon drawn.’

‘Fish. I’m bait.’

Sachs glanced to the side. ‘Oh, hell. He’s gone.’

The unsub, or whoever he was, had disappeared around the corner of a glass-and-chrome building, about ten stories high, next to the restaurant where Samantha Levine had been dining – before the fateful trip to the restroom.

‘I’m on it,’ Simpson said. She sprinted in the direction the man had gone.

Sachs ran to the command post and told Bo Haumann there was a possible suspect. Instantly he marshaled a half-dozen ESU and other officers. She glanced toward Simpson. From the way she paused and looked around, Sachs deduced the suspect had vanished.

The detective turned and trotted back to Sachs and Haumann.

‘Sorry, Amelia. He’s gone. Maybe ducked into that building – the fancy one on the corner – or took off in a car.’

Haumann said, ‘We’ll follow up. We have a picture of your unsub from the homicide yesterday, the Identi-Kit image.’

She pictured the surly, Slavic-looking face, the weirdly light eyes.

The ESU leader said to the men he’d called around him, ‘Deploy. Go find him. And somebody call it in to Midtown South. I want a team moving west down Fifty-two Street. We’ll hem him in, if we can.’

‘Yessir.’

They trotted off.

As much as she wanted to go with them – she considered handing off the crime scene – Sachs finished dressing for the grid.

When she was gowned, bootied and hooded, she grabbed the collection kit and, with a glance back at the street down which the fish had swum away, Sachs started for the door of the restaurant.