The Skin Collector(Lincoln Rhyme)

Chapter 55





Amelia Sachs returned from the most recent crime scene in the Unsub 11-5 case. TT Gordon’s tattoo parlor in the East Village.

It turned out, though, that Gordon himself was not the victim. He’d been out of the parlor when the unsub snuck inside, locked the door and proceeded into the back room for the lethal tattooing session. The body was that of one of the artists who worked in the parlor, a man named Eddie Beaufort. He was a transplant from South Carolina who’d moved to New York a few years ago and was, Sachs had learned from Gordon, making a name for himself in the inking world.

‘We should’ve had somebody on the tattoo parlor, Rhyme,’ she said.

‘Who would’ve thought he’d be at risk?’ Rhyme was truly surprised that the unsub had tracked the artist down. How? It seemed unlikely but possible that he’d followed Gordon from Rhyme’s. But the tat community would be a small one and word must’ve gotten back to the killer that Gordon was helping with the case. The unsub would have heard and gone to the parlor to kill him. Finding he wasn’t there, maybe he had just decided to make clear that it was a bad idea to assist the police and picked for a victim the first employee he found.

It was also time to send another message.

Sachs described the scene: Beaufort, lying on his back. His shirt was off and the unsub had tattooed another part of the puzzle on his abdomen. She slid the SD card from her camera and displayed the pictures on the screen.



Ron Pulaski, back from his car wreck of an undercover assignment, stood in front of the display with his arms crossed. ‘They’re not numerical order: the second, forty, seventeenth and the six hundredth.’

Rhyme said, ‘Good point. He could have gone numerically if he’d wanted to. Either the order is significant – or he wanted to scramble them for some reason. And we’re ordinal again, not cardinal. “Fort”Y is the only cardinal number.’

Mel Cooper now suggested, ‘An encryption?’

That was a possibility. But there were far too many combinations and no common reference point. In breaking a simple code in which letters are converted to numbers, you can start with the knowledge that the letter ‘e’ appears most frequently in the English language and preliminarily assign that value to the most commonly occurring numbers in the code. But here, they had far too few numbers – and they were combined with words, which suggested that the numbers did not mean anything other than what they appeared to be, cryptic though that meaning was.

It could still be a location, but this number eliminated longitude or latitude. One or more addresses?

Pulaski said, ‘Beaufort wasn’t killed underground.’

Rhyme pointed out, ‘No, the unsub’s motive was different here: to kill TT Gordon specifically or at least somebody in the parlor. He didn’t need to follow his standard MO. Now, let’s look at what else you collected, Sachs.’

She and Cooper walked to the examination table. Both donned gloves and face masks.

‘No prints, finger or footwear,’ she said. ‘ME has the blood workup. I told him we needed the results yesterday. He said it was all hands on deck.’

‘Other trace?’ Rhyme asked.

Sachs nodded at several bags.

The criminalist barked, ‘Mel, get on that.’

As Cooper picked up and examined each one, then analyzed the contents, Sachs ran through the other pictures of the scene. Eddie Beaufort, hands cuffed behind him and lying on his back, like the others. It was obvious he’d suffered gastrointestinal symptoms and severe vomiting.

The phone rang with a familiar number.

Sachs gave a laugh. ‘That’s as ASAP as it gets.’

‘Doctor, it’s Lincoln Rhyme,’ he said to the medical examiner. ‘What do you have?’

‘Odd, Captain.’ Using Rhyme’s old title. It never failed to be both jarring and familiar.

‘How? Exactly.’

‘The victim was killed by amatoxin alpha-amanitin.’

‘Death cap mushroom,’ Cooper said. ‘Amanita phalloides.’

‘That’s it,’ the medical examiner said.

Rhyme knew them well. Amanitas are known for three things: a smell like honey, a very pleasant taste and the ability to kill more efficiently than any other fungus on earth.

‘And the odd part?’

‘The dosage. I’ve never seen a concentration this high. Usually it takes days to die, but he lasted about an hour I’d guess.’

‘And a pretty bad hour,’ Sachs said.

‘Well, that’s right,’ said the medical examiner, as if this had never occurred to him.

‘Any other substances?’

‘More propofol. Just like the others.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Nope.’

Rhyme grimaced and began to hit disconnect. Sachs called, ‘Thanks.’

‘You’re—’

Click.

‘Keep going, Mel,’ Rhyme said.

Cooper ran another sample of trace through the gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer. ‘This is—’

‘Don’t say “odd”,’ Rhyme snapped. ‘I’ve had enough odd.’

‘Troubling. That was the word.’

‘Go on.’

‘Nitrocellulose, di-ethylene glycol dinitrate, dibutyl phthalate, diphenylamine, potassium chloride, graphite.’

Rhyme frowned. ‘How much?’

‘A lot.’

‘What is it, Lincoln?’ Pulaski asked.

‘Explosives. Gunpowder, specifically. Smokeless – modern formulation.’

Sachs asked the tech, ‘From a discharged weapon?’

‘No. Some actual grains. Pre-burn.’

Pulaski asked, ‘He reloads his own ammunition?’

It was a reasonable suggestion. But Rhyme considered this for a moment and then said, ‘No, I don’t think so. Usually it’s only snipers and hunters who reload. And our unsub hasn’t left any evidence that he’s either. Not much interest in firearms at all.’ Rhyme stared at the computer printout of the GC/MS. ‘No, I think he’s using the raw powder for an improvised explosive device.’ He sighed. ‘Poison’s not enough. Now he wants to blow something up.’






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537 St. Marks Street



Victim: Eddie Beaufort, 38 – Employee at TT Gordon’s tattoo parlor

– Probably not intended victim



Perpetrator: Presumably Unsub 11-5

COD: Poisoning with amatoxin alpha-amanitin (from Amanita phalloides, death cap mushroom), introduced via tattooing

Tattoo reads: ‘the six hundredth’

Sedated with propofol – How obtained? Access to medical supplies? (No local thefts)



Handcuffs – Generic, unable to source



Trace – Nitrocellulose, di-ethylene glycol dinitrate, dibutyl phthalate, diphenylamine, potassium chloride, graphite: smokeless gunpowder

Planning to use improvised explosive device?





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