The Skin Collector(Lincoln Rhyme)

Chapter 3





One can view death in two ways.

In the discipline of forensic science an investigator looks at death abstractly, considers it to be merely an event that gives rise to a series of tasks. Good forensic cops view that event as if through the lens of history; the best see death as fiction, and the victim as someone who never existed at all.

Detachment is a necessary tool for crime scene work, just like latex gloves and alternative light sources.

As he sat in the red-and-gray Merits wheelchair in front of the window of his Central Park West town house, Lincoln Rhyme happened to be thinking of a recent death in just this way. Last week a man had been murdered downtown, a mugging gone wrong. Just after leaving his office in the city’s Department of Environmental Protection, mid-evening, he’d been pulled into a deserted construction site across the street. Rather than give up his wallet, he’d chosen to fight and, no match for the perp, he’d been stabbed to death.

The case, whose file sat in front of him now, was mundane, and the sparse evidence typical of such a murder: a cheap weapon, a serrated-edge kitchen knife, dotted with fingerprints not on file at IAFIS or anywhere else, indistinct footprints in the slush that had coated the ground that night, and no trace or trash or cigar-ette butts that weren’t day- or week-old trace or trash or cigarette butts. And therefore useless. To all appearances it was a random crime; there were no springboards to likely perps. The officers had interviewed the victim’s fellow employees in the public works department and talked to friends and family. There’d been no drug connections, no dicey business deals, no jealous lovers, no jealous spouses of lovers.

Given the paltry evidence, the case, Rhyme knew, would be solved only one way: Someone would carelessly boast about scoring a wallet near City Hall. And the boastee, collared for drugs or domestic abuse or petty larce, would cut a deal by giving up the boaster.

This crime, a mugging gone wrong, was death observed from a distance, to Lincoln Rhyme. Historical. Fictional.

View number one.

The second way to regard death is from the heart: when a human being with whom you have a true connection is no longer of this earth. And the other death on Rhyme’s mind on this blustery, grim day was affecting him as deeply as the mugging victim’s killing was not.

Rhyme wasn’t close to many people. This was not a function of his physical condition – he was a quadriplegic, largely paralyzed from the neck down. No, he’d never been a people person. He was a science person. A mind person.

Oh, there’d been a few friends he’d been close to, some relatives, lovers. His wife, now ex.

Thom, his aide.

Amelia Sachs, of course.

But the second man who’d died several days ago had, in one sense, been closer than all of the others, and for this reason: He’d challenged Rhyme like no one else, forced him to think beyond the expansive boundaries where his own mind roamed, forced him to anticipate and strategize and question. Forced him to fight for his life too; the man had come very close to killing him.

The Watchmaker was the most intriguing criminal Rhyme had ever encountered. A man of shifting identities, Richard Logan was primarily a professional killer, though he’d orchestrated an alpha-omega of crimes, from terrorist attacks to robbery. He would work for whoever paid his hefty fee – provided the job was, yes, challenging enough. Which was the same criterion Rhyme used when deciding to take on a case as a consulting forensic scientist.


The Watchmaker was one of the few criminals able to outthink him. Although Rhyme had eventually set the trap that landed Logan in prison he still stung from his failure to stop several plots that were successful. And even when he failed, the Watchmaker sometimes managed to wreak havoc. In a case in which Rhyme had derailed the attempted killing of a Mexican officer investigating drug cartels, Logan had still provoked an international incident (it was finally agreed to seal the records and pretend the attempted hit had never happened).

But now the Watchmaker was gone.

The man had died in prison – not murdered by a fellow inmate or a suicide, which Rhyme had first suspected upon hearing the news. No, the COD was pedestrian – cardiac arrest, though massive. The doctor, whom Rhyme had spoken to yesterday, reported that even if they’d been able to bring Logan around he would have had permanent and severe brain damage. Though medicos did not use phrases like ‘his death was a blessing,’ that was the impression Rhyme took from the doctor’s tone.

A blast of temperamental November wind shook the windows of Rhyme’s town house. He was in the building’s front parlor – the place in which he felt more comfortable than anywhere else in the world. Created as a Victorian sitting room, it was now a fully decked-out forensic lab, with spotless tables for examining evidence, computers and high-def monitors, racks of instruments, sophisticated equipment like fume and particulate control hoods, latent fingerprint imaging chambers, microscopes – optical and scanning electron – and the centerpiece: a gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer, the workhorse of forensic labs.

Any small- or even medium-sized police department in the country might envy the setup, which had cost millions. All paid for by Rhyme himself. The settlement after the accident on a crime scene rendering him a quad had been quite substantial; so were the fees that he charged the NYPD and other law enforcement agencies that hired him. (There were occasional offers from other sources that might produce revenue, such as Hollywood’s proposals for TV shows based on the cases he’d worked. The Man in the Chair was one suggested title. Rhyme and Reason another. Thom had translated his boss’s response to these overtures – ‘Are they out of their f*cking minds?’ – as, ‘Mr Rhyme has asked me to convey his appreciation for your interest. But he’s afraid he has too many commitments at this point for a project like that.’)

Rhyme now turned his chair around and stared at a delicate and beautiful pocket watch sitting in a holder on the mantelpiece. A Breguet. It happened to be a present from the Watchmaker himself.

His mourning was complex and reflected the dual views of death he’d been thinking of. Certainly there were analytical – forensic – reasons to be troubled by the loss. He’d now never be able to probe the man’s mind to his satisfaction. As the nickname suggested, Logan was obsessed with time and timepieces – he actually made watches and clocks – and that was how he plotted out his crimes, with painstaking precision. Ever since their paths first crossed, Rhyme had marveled at how Logan’s thought processes worked. He even hoped that the man would allow him a prison visit so that they could talk about the chess-match-like crimes he’d planned out.

Logan’s death also left some other, practical concerns. The prosecutor had offered Logan a plea bargain, a reduced sentence in exchange for giving up the names of some of the people who’d hired him and whom he’d worked with; the man clearly had an extensive network of criminal colleagues whose identities the police would like to learn. There were rumors too of plots Logan had put together before he’d gone to prison.

But Logan hadn’t bought the DA’s deal. And, more irritating, he’d pleaded guilty, denying Rhyme another chance to learn more about who he was and to identify his family members and associates. Rhyme had even planned to use facial recognition technology and undercover agents to identify those attending the man’s trial.

Ultimately, though, Rhyme understood he was taking the man’s demise hard because of the second view of death: that connection between them. We’re defined and enlivened by what opposes us. And when the Watchmaker died, Lincoln Rhyme died a bit too.

He looked at the other two people in the room. One was the youngster on Rhyme’s team, NYPD patrol officer Ron Pulaski, who was packing up the evidence in the City Hall mugging/homicide case.

The other was Rhyme’s caregiver, Thom Reston, a handsome, slim man, dressed as immaculately as always. Today: dark-brown slacks with an enviable knife-blade crease, a pale-yellow shirt and a zoological tie in greens and browns; the cloth seemed to sport a simian face or two. Hard to tell. Rhyme himself paid little attention to clothing. His black sweats and green long-sleeved sweater were functional and good insulators. That was all he cared about.

‘I want to send flowers,’ Rhyme now announced.

‘Flowers?’ Thom asked.

‘Yes. Flowers. Send them. People still do that, I assume. Wreaths saying RIP, Rest in Peace, though what’s the point of that? What else’re the dead going to be doing? It’s a better message than Good Luck, don’t you think?’

‘Send flowers to … Wait. Are you talking about Richard Logan?’

‘Of course. Who else has died lately who’s flower-worthy?’

Pulaski said, ‘Hm, Lincoln. “Flower-worthy.” That is not an expression I would ever imagine you saying.’

‘Flowers,’ Rhyme repeated petulantly. ‘Why is this not registering?’

‘And why’re you in a bad mood?’ Thom asked.

‘Old married couple’ was a phrase that could be used to describe caregiver and charge.

‘I’m hardly in a bad mood. I simply want to send flowers to a funeral home. But nobody’s doing it. We can get the name from the hospital that did the autopsy. They’ll have to send the corpse to a funeral home. Hospitals don’t embalm or cremate.’

Pulaski said, ‘You know, Lincoln. One way to think about it is: There’s some justice. You could say the Watchmaker got the death penalty, after all.’

Blond and determined and eager, Pulaski had the makings of a fine crime scene officer and Rhyme had taken on the job of mentor. Which included not only instruction in forensic science but also getting the kid to use his mind. This he didn’t seem to be doing presently. ‘And just how does a random arterial occlusion, rookie, equal justice? If the prosecutor in New York State chose not to seek the death penalty, then you might say that a premature death undermines justice. Not furthers it.’

‘I—’ the young man stammered, blushing Valentine red.

‘Now, rookie, let’s move on from spurious observations. Flowers. Find out when the body’s being released from Westchester Memorial and where it’s going. I want the flowers there ASAP, whether there’s a service or not. With a card from me.’

‘Saying what?’

‘Nothing other than my name.’

‘Flowers?’ Amelia Sachs’s voice echoed from the hallway leading to the kitchen and the back door of the town house. She walked into the parlor, nodding greetings.

‘Lincoln’s going to send flowers to the funeral home. For Richard Logan. I mean, I am.’

She hung her dark jacket on a hook in the hall. She was in close-fitting black jeans, a yellow sweater and a black wool sport coat. The only indication of her rank as a police detective was a Glock riding high on her hip, though the leap from weapon to law enforcer was a tentative deduction at best. To look at the tall, slim redhead – with abundant straight hair – you might guess she was a fashion model. Which she had been, before joining the NYPD.


Sachs walked closer and kissed Rhyme on the lips. She tasted of lipstick and smelled of gunshot residue; she’d been to the range that morning.

Thinking of cosmetics, Rhyme recalled that the victim of the City Hall mugging/murder had shaved just before leaving the office; nearly invisible bits of shave cream and tiny rods of beard had been found adhering to his neck and cheek. He’d also recently sprayed or rubbed on aftershave. In their analysis, while Rhyme had been noting those facts, potentially helpful for the investigation, Sachs had grown still. She’d said, ‘So he was going out that night, a date probably – you wouldn’t shave for guy friends. You know, Rhyme, if he hadn’t spent that last five minutes in the restroom, the timing would’ve changed. And everything would’ve turned out different. He’d’ve survived the night. And maybe gone on to live a long, full life.’

Or he might’ve gotten into his car drunk and rammed a bus filled with schoolchildren.

Waste of time, playing the fate game.

View of Death Number One, View of Death Number Two.

‘You know the funeral home?’ Sachs asked.

‘Not yet.’

Not knowing he was about to be arrested, and believing he was minutes away from murdering Rhyme, Logan had made a promise that he would spare Sachs’s life. Perhaps this clemency was another of the reasons for Rhyme’s mourning the man’s death.

Thom nodded to Sachs. ‘Coffee? Anything else?’

‘Just coffee, thanks.’

‘Lincoln?’

The criminalist shook his head.

When the aide returned with the cup, he handed it off to Sachs, who thanked him. While the nerves throughout most of his body were insensate, Rhyme’s gustatory cells, aka taste buds, worked just fine and he appreciated that Thom Reston made a very good cup of coffee. No capsules or pre-ground, and the word ‘instant’ was not in his vocabulary.

With a wry smile the aide said to her, ‘So. What do you think of Lincoln’s emotional side?’

She warmed her hands around the coffee. ‘No, Thom, I think there’s method to his sentiment.’

Ah, that’s my Sachs. Always thinking. This was one of the reasons he loved her. Their eyes met. Rhyme knew that his smile, minuscule though it was, probably matched hers muscle for muscle.

Sachs continued, ‘The Watchmaker was always an enigma. We didn’t know much about him – he had California connections was about all. Some distant family we could never track down, no associates. This might be the chance to find people who knew and worked with him – legitimately or in his criminal projects. Right, Rhyme?’

One hundred percent, he reflected.

Rhyme said to Pulaski, ‘And when you find out the funeral home, I want you there.’

‘Me?’

‘Your first undercover assignment.’

‘Not first,’ he corrected.

‘First at a funeral.’

‘That’s true. Who should I be?’

Rhyme said the first thing that came to his mind. ‘Harold Pigeon.’

‘Harry Pigeon?’

‘I was thinking of birds.’ A nod toward the nest of peregrine falcons on Rhyme’s window ledge, huddled down against the storm. They tended to nest lower in bad weather.

‘Harry Pigeon.’ The patrolman was shaking his head. ‘No way.’

Sachs laughed. Rhyme grimaced. ‘I don’t care. Make up your own damn name.’

‘Stan Walesa. My mother’s father.’

‘Perfect.’ An impatient look at a box in the corner of the room. ‘There. Get one of those.’

‘What’s that?’

Sachs explained, ‘Prepaid mobiles. We keep a half dozen of them here for ops like this.’

The young officer collected one. ‘A Nokia. Hm. Flip phone. State of the art.’ He said this with consummate sarcasm.

Before he dialed, Sachs said, ‘Just be sure to memorize the number first, so if somebody asks for it you don’t fumble.’

‘Sure. Good.’ Pulaski used the prepaid to call his personal phone and noted the number then stepped away to make the call.

Sachs and Rhyme turned to the crime scene report on the City Hall mugging case and made some edits.

A moment later Pulaski returned. ‘The hospital said they’re waiting to hear about where to send the body. The morgue director said he’s expecting a call in the next few hours.’

Rhyme looked him over. ‘You up for this?’

‘I suppose. Sure.’

‘If there’s a service, you’ll go. If not, you’ll get to the funeral home at the same time as whoever’s picking up the remains. The flowers from me’ll be there. Now, that’ll be a conversation starter – the man Richard Logan tried to kill and who put him in jail sends flowers to his funeral.’

‘Who’s Walesa supposed to be?’

‘An associate of Logan’s. Exactly who, I’m not sure. I’ll have to think it through. But it should be somebody inscrutable, dangerous.’ He scowled. ‘I wish you didn’t look like an altar boy. Were you one?’

‘My brother and I both.’

‘Well, practice looking scruffy.’

‘Don’t forget dangerous,’ Sachs said, ‘though that’s going to be tougher than inscrutable.’

Thom brought Rhyme some coffee in a straw-fitted cup. Apparently the aide had noticed him glancing at Sachs’s. Rhyme thanked him with a nod.

Old married couple …

Thom said, ‘I feel better now, Lincoln. For a minute I really did think I was seeing a soft side. It was disorienting. But knowing that you’re just setting up a sting to spy on the family of a corpse? It’s restored my faith in you.’

Rhyme grumbled, ‘It’s simply logical. You know, I’m really not the cold fish everyone thinks I am.’

Though ironically Rhyme did want to send the flowers in part for a sentimental reason: to pay his respects to a worthy adversary. He suspected the Watchmaker would have done the same for him.

Views of Death Number One and Number Two were not, of course, mutually exclusive.

Rhyme then cocked his head.

‘What?’ Sachs asked.

‘What’s the temperature?’

‘Right around freezing.’

‘So there’s ice on the steps outside?’ Rhyme’s town house sported both stairs and a disabled-accessible ramp.

‘There was in the back,’ she said. ‘Front too, I assume.’

‘We’re about to have a visitor, I think.’

Though the evidence was largely anecdotal, Rhyme had come to believe that, after the accident that deprived him of so many sensations, those that survived grew more discerning. Hearing in particular. He’d detected someone crunching up the front steps.

A moment later the buzzer sounded and Thom went to answer it.

The sound and pacing of the footsteps as the visitor entered the hallway and made for the parlor revealed who’d come a-callin’.

‘Lon.’

Detective First-Grade Lon Sellitto turned the corner and strode through the archway, pulling off his Burberry overcoat. It was tan and vivid with the creases that characterized most of Sellitto’s garb, thanks to his portly physique and careless posture. Rhyme wondered why he didn’t stick with dark clothing, which wouldn’t show the rumpling so much. Though once the overcoat was off and tossed over a rattan chair, Rhyme noted that the navy-blue suit displayed its own troubled texture.

‘Bad out there,’ Sellitto muttered. He dusted his thinning gray-black hair, and a few dots of sleet bailed. His eyes followed them down. He’d tracked in muck and ice. ‘Sorry about that.’


Thom said not to worry and brought him a cup of coffee.

‘Bad,’ the detective repeated, toasting his hands on the mug the way Sachs had. Eyes toward the window, on the other side of which, beyond the falcons, you could see sleet and mist and black branches. And little else of Central Park.

Rhyme didn’t get out much and in any event weather meant nothing to him, unless it was a factor in a crime scene.

Or it helped his early warning system detect visitors.

‘It’s pretty much finished,’ Rhyme said, nodding at the City Hall mugging/murder crime scene report.

‘Yeah, yeah, that’s not why I’m here.’ Spoken nearly as one word.

Rhyme’s attention hovered. Sellitto was a senior officer in Major Cases and if he wasn’t here to pick up the report, then maybe something else, something more interesting, was on the horizon. More propitious was that Sellitto had seen a tray of pastry, homemade by Thom, and had turned away as if the crullers were invisible. His mission here had to be urgent.

And, therefore, engaging.

‘We got a call, a homicide down in SoHo, Linc. Earlier today. We drew straws and you got picked. Hope you’re free.’

‘How can I get picked if I never drew a straw?’

A sip of coffee. Ignoring Rhyme. ‘It’s a tough one.’

‘I’m listening.’

‘Woman was abducted from the basement of the store where she worked. Some boutique. Killer dragged her through an access door and into a tunnel under the building.’

Rhyme knew that beneath SoHo was a warren of tunnels, dug years ago for transporting goods from one industrial building to another. He’d always believed it was just a matter of time before somebody used the place as a killing zone.

‘Sexual assault?’

‘No, Amelia,’ Sellitto said. ‘The perp’s a tattoo artist, seems. And from what the respondings said a pretty f*cking good one. He gave her a tat. Only he didn’t use ink. He used poison.’

Rhyme had been a forensic scientist for many years; his mind often made accurate deductions from scant preliminary details. But inferences work only when the facts presented echo those from the past. This information was unique in Rhyme’s memory and didn’t become a springboard for any theories whatsoever.

‘What was the toxin he used?’

‘They don’t know. This just happened, I was saying. We’re holding the scene.’

‘More, Lon. The design? That he tattooed on her?’

‘It was some words, they said.’

The intrigue factor swelled. ‘Do you know what they were?’

‘The respondings didn’t say. But they told me it looked like only part of a sentence. And you can guess what that means.’

‘He’s going to need more victims,’ Rhyme said, glancing Sachs’s way. ‘So he can send the rest of his message.’