The Skin Collector(Lincoln Rhyme)

Chapter 45





‘The hell is going on?’ Rhyme barked.


The criminalist and Mel Cooper were in the front hallway of the town house, the door open. Ron Pulaski joined them. They were peering out into the street, which was filled with police cars, two ESU vans and two ambulances.

Blue lights, white, red. Flashing urgently.

Cooper’s and Pulaski’s hands were near their sidearms.

Thom was upstairs, probably observing from a bedroom window.

Five minutes ago Rhyme had heard frantic wails grow loud as emergency vehicles streaked along the street outside. He’d expected them to continue on Central Park West, but they didn’t. The vehicles braked to a stop just one door north. The piercing howls remained at peak pitch for a moment then one by one shut off.

Peering outside, Rhyme said, ‘Call downtown, Mel. Find out.’

He’d assumed at first that the incident had something to do with him – maybe the unsub had been making a frontal assault on the town house – but then he noted that the attention was focused on the park itself and that none of the officers who were part of the operation approached his place.

Cooper had a conversation with someone at Dispatch and then disconnected.

‘Assault in the park. Dark-skinned male, thirties. Maybe attempted rape.’

‘Ah.’ They continued to watch for another three or four minutes. Rhyme examined the park. It was hard to see anything through the mist and reinvigorated sleet. A rape? The urge for sex is more impulsive than that for money and more intense, he knew, but in this weather?

He wondered if he’d draw the crime scene side of the case and was thinking that given the icy rain the evidence would be a challenge.

But that put in mind Lon Sellitto, who would normally be the NYPD representative who’d contact him about potential jobs. The detective was still in the most intensive of intensive care wards, nowhere near consciousness.

Rhyme put the rape, or attempted rape, out of his mind. He, Pulaski and Cooper returned to the parlor laboratory, where they’d been analyzing the evidence Detective Cheyenne Edwards had delivered – the finds from the crime scene at Pam Willoughby’s.

There hadn’t been much, though the unsub had left in such a hurry that he’d neglected to pick up the hypodermic needle he’d stabbed Seth with and a vial of the poison he’d presumably been about to use on the young man. The substance was from the white baneberry plant – also called doll’s eyes, because the berries resemble eyeballs. Eerie. The toxin, Cooper explained, was cardiogenic; it basically stopped the heart. Of all the poisons their unsub was using this was the most humane, killing without the pain of toxins that attacked the GI and renal systems.

Rhyme noticed Ron Pulaski looking down at his phone. His face was lit with a faint blue glow.

Checking messages or the time? Rhyme wondered. Mobiles were used as watches more and more frequently nowadays.

Pulaski hung up and said to Rhyme, ‘I should go.’

So, time. Not texts.

Ron Pulaski’s undercover assignment at the funeral home was about to begin: to see who was collecting the Watchmaker’s remains and maybe, just maybe learn a bit more about the enigmatic criminal.

‘You all set, you ready to be Serpico, you ready to be Gielgud?’

‘Was he a cop? And, wait, didn’t Serpico get shot in the face?’

Rhyme and Pulaski had spent some time that morning on a cover story that would seem credible to the funeral home director and whoever was coming to collect the man’s remains.

Rhyme had never done undercover work but he knew the rules: Less is more and more is less. Meaning you research the hell out of your role, learn every possible fact, but when you present yourself to the perp, you offer up only the minimal. Inundating the bad guys with details is a sure giveaway.

So he and Pulaski had come up with a bio for Stan Walesa, a bio that would have made credible some connection with the Watchmaker. Rhyme had noted him walking around the lab all day, reciting facts they’d made up. ‘Born in Brooklyn, has an import-export company, investigated for insider trading, questioned in connection with a banking scam, divorced, knows weapons, was hired by an associate of the Watchmaker to transport some containers overseas, no, I can’t give his name away, no, I don’t know what was in the containers. Again: Born in Brooklyn, has an import-export …’

Now, as Pulaski pulled on his coat, Rhyme said, ‘Look, rookie, don’t think about the fact that this is our only chance to fill in gaps on the late Watchmaker’s biography.’

‘Um, okay.’

‘And if you mess up, we’ll never have this opportunity again. Don’t think about that. Put it out of your mind.’

‘I …’ The patrolman’s face relaxed. ‘You’re f*cking with me, aren’t you, Lincoln?’

Rhyme smiled. ‘You’ll do great.’

Pulaski chuckled and disappeared into the hallway. His exit was announced a moment later by a blast of wind through the open door. The latch clicked; then silence.

Rhyme turned to look at the containers of evidence that Detective Edwards had collected at Pam’s apartment, following the unsub’s attack on Seth. But he focused past the bags.

Well, what was this?

A miracle had occurred.

He was looking at the shelves that contained forensic books, a stack of professional journals, a density gradient instrument and … his single-malt scotch. The bottle of Glenmorangie had been placed within reach. Thom usually stashed it higher on the shelf – out of Rhyme’s grasp, the way you’d keep candy away from a child, which pissed Rhyme off to no end.

But apparently the old mother hen had been distracted and screwed up.

He resisted temptation for the time being and maneuvered back to the evidence from Pam’s apartment and the storeroom in the basement and Seth’s clothing laid out on an examination table. For a half hour he and Cooper went through the finds – which weren’t many. No friction ridges, of course, a few fibers, a hair or two, though they might have been Pam’s or they might have come from a friend of hers. Or even from Amelia Sachs, who had been a frequent visitor. There was trace, but it was mostly trace identical to that of the earlier scenes. Only one new substance was discovered: some fibers on Seth’s shirt, where the unsub had grabbed him. They were from an architectural or engineering blueprint. They had to come from 11-5, since Seth wouldn’t use such diagrams in his work as an ad agency freelancer. And Pam would have no reason to come in contact with such plans either.

Mel Cooper filled a new evidence chart, which included the trace, the syringe, the pictures of the scene, the booty footprints.

Rhyme glanced at the sparse info, displeased. No insights.

He circled away and headed for the shelf, thinking of the peaty smell and taste of the whisky, tangy but not too smoky.

With another glance toward the kitchen, where Thom was laboring away, and toward Cooper, securing evidence from the scene. Rhyme easily picked the bottle off the shelf and deposited it between his legs. He was clumsier with the crystal glass, lifting that – careful, careful – and setting it on the shelf within pouring distance.

Then he returned to the bottle and, with careful manipulation, he eased out the cork and poured into the glass.

One finger, two fingers, all right, three.

It had been a difficult day.

The bottle landed safely where it had been and he turned the chair around and returned to the center of the lab.

‘I didn’t see a thing,’ Cooper said, his back to Rhyme.

‘Nobody believes witnesses anyway, Mel.’ He eased up to the evidence chart and stopped.


Not spilling a drop.