The Skin Collector(Lincoln Rhyme)

Chapter 38





‘Hell, Amelia, how bad is it?’ Sellitto asked.

He and Sachs were standing in parallel positions – hands on hips – looking down into the dusky parking garage beneath the Belvedere Apartments.

‘Bad,’ she muttered. She looked over the city schematic of this scene. She ran her finger over the parking area and the abandoned New York Central train tunnel. ‘Ruined. Gone. All of the evidence.’



Sellitto stamped his feet, presumably to warm them against the stabbing chill of the icy muck they stood in. Sachs had stamped too; it didn’t work. Just made her toes sting more.

She noted Bo Haumann nearby, on his mobile. The ESU commander disconnected and strode over to them. Nodded.

Sellitto asked, ‘Anything?’

The wiry, compact man, wearing a turtleneck under his shirt, strode forward. He rubbed a hand over his gray crew-cut hair. His eyebrows were frosty but he seemed completely unfazed by the cold. ‘He’s gone. Rabbited. Got a team into the tunnel from a manhole up the street. But even that’s useless. All they could say is “No trace of him.”’

Sachs gave a grim laugh. ‘No trace. In both senses of the word.’

Rhyme’s concern had proved warranted. By opening the fire department standpipe, Unsub 11-5 had managed to obliterate the crime scene with calculated efficiency. The perp had then slipped out through the doorway by which he’d gained access to the parking garage, leaving it open. Within minutes, the geyser of water had flooded the ground floor of the garage and cascaded through the door into the tunnel below – which was to have been the killing zone.

When it comes to crime scene contaminants, water can be worse than fire. Much trace can survive flames and, while walls may collapse, the position of objects and architectural elements and even human bodies at the scene remains largely unchanged. A flood, though, is like a big mixing bowl, not only diluting and destroying and blending, but also moving items far from their original positions.

Water is, Rhyme had frequently pointed out, the universal solvent.

Emergency Service officers had cleared the scene and gotten the victim to the street level. He was doped up but conscious and his only injuries appeared to be bruises from where the water had slammed him into a wall. The unsub hadn’t had time to start on the mod. The vic was bordering on hypothermia but the medical technicians got him out of his drenched clothing and into thermal blankets.

After extracting him, and clearing the scene, the police retreated while two firemen in full biohazard outfits waded through the torrent to shut the flow off. They took water samples too. Rhyme had been concerned that the unsub might have spilled into the water some toxin that, even if diluted, could injure or kill.

An ESU officer came up to them. ‘Detectives. Captain.’

‘Go ahead,’ Haumann said.

‘It’s draining and the fire department’s hooked up a pumper. But it’s still a flood. Oh, and they’ve done a preliminary test of the water and there’s no biohazard or chemicals, nothing significant, at any rate. So they’re pumping to the sewer drains. Should be pretty clear in about an hour.’

The officer said to Sachs, ‘They said they found something you’ll want to see, Detective. One of the firemen’s bringing it out now.’


‘What?’ she asked.

‘Just a plastic bag. All I know.’

She nodded, not holding out much hope it had anything to do with the case. It might hold a banana peel, a joint, coins for parking meters.

Though there was always the chance it was the perp’s wallet or Social Security card.

Nothing more to do here. Sachs and Sellitto walked to the ambulance. They stepped inside, through the back, closed the door. Braden Alexander was sitting in a blue robe, shivering. The ambulance was heated but the man had just gone for a serious dunking in near-freezing water.

‘How’re you doing?’ Sellitto asked.

His jaw trembling. ‘Cold, hazy from whatever the son of a bitch gave me. They said it’s propofol.’ He stuttered as he spoke. His words were slurred too. ‘And seeing him, what he was wearing, it freaked me out.’

‘Could you describe him?’

‘Not real well. He was about six feet, pretty good shape. White. But he wore this yellow latex mask. Jesus. I freaked. I mean, I totally freaked. I said that, didn’t I? Eyeholes and nose and mouth. That was it.’

Sellitto showed him the Identi-Kit image.

‘Could be. Probably. But the mask, you know.’

‘Sure. Clothes?’

‘When he came at me in the garage, he was in coveralls, I think. I was freaked.’ More shivering. ‘But I’d seen him earlier and he was wearing something else. If it was him. He went into that building there.’

Ah, maybe they had an intact crime scene after all. Sachs sent a CS officer to take a look, with an Emergency Service backup.

‘Did he say anything?’ Sellitto asked.

‘No. Just jabbed me with a needle. Then I started to pass out. But I saw him …’ His voice faded. ‘I saw him get a scalpel out of his backpack.’

‘A scalpel, not just a knife?’

‘Definitely a scalpel. And he looked like he knew what to do with it. Oh, and he was touching my skin. On my stomach. Touching and pinching it. Jesus. What was that all about?’

‘He’s done that before,’ Sachs said. ‘We don’t know exactly why.’

‘Oh, but I remember that as he reached down, his sleeve went up, you know. And I saw he had this tattoo. It was weird. A centipede, I’m pretty sure. Yeah. But, you know, with a face.’

‘What color was it?’ Sellitto asked.

‘Red. Now, next I know I came to and was choking and the cops, the police were dragging me out of the water. I was so cold, cold. Man. It was like I was spinning around in the ocean. Is this the guy who’s been killing those people in town?’

Sometimes you withheld, sometimes you told.

‘It’s likely.’

‘Why me?’

‘We aren’t sure what his motive is. Do you have any enemies, anybody who might want to do this?’ Sachs and Rhyme had not completely dismissed the theory that the unsub was using the apparent serial killings to cover up the murder of a specific victim, lost in the general carnage of Unsub 11-5.

But Alexander said, ‘I do computer security work and I was thinking I jammed the wrong hacker, and he wanted to nail me. I thought the guy who went into the building, the one maybe following me, might’ve been a strong-arm, whatever you’d call it. But I don’t know of anybody specific.’

‘That’s probably unlikely,’ Sellitto said. ‘We think the people he’s picking are random.’

Happenstance victims …

They took Alexander’s contact information.

Sachs donned gloves and collected the cuffs, which had been removed by a responding, put them into a collection bag and filled out the chain-of-custody card. She made a note to get the fingerprints of the medic who’d removed the cuffs. But she had no doubt that their diligent unsub wasn’t going to get careless now.

They stepped out of the ambulance and were blasted by the chill wind.

A crime scene officer approached, the one she’d sent to check on the building nearby – where Alexander had said he’d seen a man following him. The CS cop, a sinewy young man in round glasses, said, ‘Nobody in the building. And we went through the basement real careful. No exit from down there, no way to get to the parking garage.’

‘Okay, thanks.’

Two firemen approached, their gear dripping. One held a small plastic bag by the corner. Ah, the maybe evidence. She wasn’t concerned about contamination; the fireman wore neoprene biohazard gloves.

He greeted them. ‘Heard you were the crime scene officer in charge.’

‘Right.’ Sachs nodded. ‘How is it down there?’

‘Mess. It’s still under eight inches of water. And covers the whole ground floor. Then the tunnel underneath the lower level? That’s a lake too.’

‘What’d you find?’ Nodding at the bag.

‘Was against the wall near where the victim was. Might be from your boy, might not. There was nothing else, though.’

Banana peel, pot, coins …

She took the bag in her gloved hand. Inside were small metal fixtures, about an inch high, in various shapes. Hardware of some kind, Sachs guessed. She showed the bag to Sellitto, who shrugged. She slipped this into an evidence bag and took the fireman’s name and badge number for the chain-of-custody card. Wrote the details down and had him sign. She did the same.

‘I want to go down there,’ Sachs said to one of the firemen. ‘Borrow some boots?’

‘Sure. We’ll suit you up.’

Another fireman came by with a cardboard tray, passing around coffee. Sellitto took one but Sachs declined. She had no taste for anything at the moment except finding a lead, any lead, to Unsub 11-5.