The Skin Collector(Lincoln Rhyme)

Chapter 69





Seth walked to the front door, put the chain on and returned.

He smiled ruefully. ‘I can’t believe that I mentioned Larchwood. I knew you and your mom stayed with the Patriot Frontier there. But you never mentioned it. Stupid of me, a mistake like that.’

She whispered, ‘It was one of the things Amelia and I argued about. She asked if I’d told you about my life there. I said it didn’t matter. But really? I was afraid to tell you. And now … You’re one of them, aren’t you? You’re working with the people who tried to poison the water.’

He picked up the remote to turn the TV on, presumably to see the news. Pam took the chance to leap from the couch, shoving him back hard. When he stumbled back she sprinted for the door. But she got no more than two steps before he tackled her. She went down hard, her face bouncing on the wood. Pam tasted blood from a split lip. He grabbed her by the collar and dragged her roughly back to the couch, virtually tossing her onto it.

‘Never do that again.’ Leaning close, he dipped his finger in her blood and drew something on her face.

Whispering, he told her, ‘Body markings’re windows, you know. Into who you are and what you’re feeling. In some Native American tribes using paint – which is just a temporary tattoo – was a way to tell everybody what you were feeling. Warriors couldn’t express emotion through words or facial expressions – not part of the culture – but they could use painted mods to show they were in love or sad or angry. I mean, even if you lost a child, you couldn’t cry. You couldn’t react. But you could paint your face. And everyone knew how sad you were.

‘On your face, just now? I wrote the marks that mean Happy in the Lakota tribe.’

Then he reached into his backpack and took from it a roll of duct tape and a portable tattoo gun.

When he did this, his sleeve tugged up and Pam found herself staring at a tattoo. It was red. She couldn’t see it all but the portion exposed was the head and upper body of a centipede, whose all-too-human eyes stared at her just as Seth’s did now: The look was of hunger and disdain.

‘You’re the one tattooing those people,’ Pam said, her voice a frail whisper. ‘Killing them.’

Seth didn’t respond.

‘How do you know that couple? The terrorists?’

‘I’m their nephew.’

Seth – but no, not Seth; he’d have a different name – was assembling his tattoo gear. She stared at his arm, the tattoo. The insect eyes stared back.

‘Oh, this?’ He tugged his sleeve all the way up. ‘It’s not a tat. It’s just a drawing – water-soluble ink. The sort some artists use to do outlines.’ He licked his finger and smeared it. ‘When I was the Underground Man – out on the prowl – I’d draw it on my arm. Took ten minutes. When I was your friend Seth, I’d wash it off. It only had to be good enough to let witnesses see it and for your police friends – and you – to be happy that the new man in your life, me, wasn’t the killer.’

Pam was crying.

‘Lip hurt? You tried to run.’ He shrugged. ‘A busted lip is nothing compared with—’

‘You’re insane!’

His eyes flared and he slammed a fist into her belly. The room burst yellow and she whimpered under the pain. Controlled the nearly overwhelming urge to vomit.

‘Do not speak to me that way. Do you understand?’ He grabbed her hair and brought his mouth inches from her ear. He shouted so loud that her ears stung. ‘Do you?’

‘Okay, okay, okay! Stop please,’ she cried. Then, ‘Who, who are you?’ she whispered, but tentatively, afraid of another blow. He seemed capable of murder; his eyes were possessed.

He pushed her away. Pam collapsed on the floor. He pulled her roughly onto the couch, duct-taped her hands behind her and rolled her over on her back.

‘My name is Billy Haven.’ He continued to set out some jars and assemble his tattoo gun. He glanced at her and noted the look of utter confusion.

‘But I don’t understand. I talked to your mother on the phone, she … Oh, yes, yes: It was your aunt.’

He nodded.

‘But I’ve known you for a year. More.’

‘Oh, we’ve been planning the attack for at least that long. And I’ve been planning to get you back into my life forever. My Lovely Girl.’

‘Lovely Girl?’

‘Stolen from me. Not physically. But mentally. You’d been kidnapped by Amelia and Lincoln. By the wrong thinkers of the world. You don’t remember me. Of course you don’t. We met a long time ago. Ages. We were young. You were living in Larchwood, the militia run by Mr and Mrs Stone.’

Pam recalled Edward and Katherine Stone. Brilliant radicals who’d fled Chicago after advocating a violent overthrow of the federal government. Pam’s mother, Charlotte Willoughby, had fallen under their sway after her husband, Pam’s father, died in a UN peacekeeping operation.

‘You were six or so. I was a few years older. My aunt and uncle came to Missouri to meet with the Stones about an anti-abortion campaign. A few years later my uncle wanted to solidify the connection between the Larchwood militia and the American Families First Council, so Stone and my uncle arranged our marriage.’


‘What?’

‘You were my Lovely Girl. You’d grow up to be my woman and the mother of our children.’

‘Like I was some kind of cow, some kind of fu—’

Striking like a snake, he jabbed his fist into her cheek, bone to bone. She inhaled at the pain.

‘I won’t warn you again. I’m your man and I’m in charge. Understand?’

She cringed and nodded.

He raged, ‘You have no idea what I’ve lived through. They took you away from me. They brainwashed you. It was like my world ended.’

That would be when Pam, her mother and stepfather came to New York a few years ago. Her parents had another terror plot in mind but Lincoln and Amelia stopped it. Her stepfather was killed, her mother arrested. Pam was rescued and went into foster care in the city.

She thought back to the day when she and Seth had met. Yes, she’d thought he seemed too familiar, too nice, too infatuated. But she’d fallen hard anyway. (All right, Pam now admitted – maybe Amelia was right that, thanks to her early years, she was desperate for affection, for love. And so she’d ignored what she should have noticed.)

Pam now stared at the tattoo gun, the vials of poison. Recalled that his victims had died in agony.

What delightful toxin had he picked for her?

That’s what was coming next, of course. He’d kill her because, Lincoln had said, she might have to be a witness in the trial against the Stantons. And he’d kill her because their plan had failed and his aunt and uncle would be in jail for the rest of their lives.

He wanted revenge.

He now looked once more at the design he’d painted on her cheek in her own blood.

Happy …

She thought of the time they’d sat on this very couch one rainy Sunday, a rerun of Seinfeld on TV, Seth kissing her for the first time.

And Pam, thinking: I was falling in love.

A lie. All a lie. She recalled the months he’d spent in London, in a training program for an ad agency opening an office here. Bullshit. He was back with his aunt and uncle planning the attack. And, after he’d supposedly returned from the UK, she hadn’t thought anything his odd behaviors. Assignments that kept him out all hours, phone calls he never took in her presence, having to leave for meetings at a minute’s notice, never taking her to meet his co-workers, never inviting her to the office. How they’d communicate through brief texts, not phone calls. But she hadn’t been suspicious. She loved him, and Seth would never have done anything to hurt her.

She forced the crying to stop. This was easier than she’d thought. Anger froze the tears.

Seth … Billy began filling the tube with a liquid from a bottle.

She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to die that way. Pain. Nausea, fire in her belly, stabbing up to her jaw, puking, puking, but finding no relief. Her skin melting, blood from her mouth, nose, eyes …

He was musing, ‘Feel bad about my cousin. Josh, poor Josh. A shame about him. The others? No worries there. My uncle was going to die soon. That was on the agenda. I was going to kill my aunt too as soon as we got back to Illinois. Blame them both on some homeless guy, an illegal probably. But once I saw the pressure in the pipes hadn’t been shut off, I knew Lincoln Rhyme had figured the plan out and I had to give them up. I left a note with the address of the hotel at the scene. That’s how Lincoln found them.’

He worked meticulously, filling the tube with the care of a surgeon, which he was, in a way, she reflected. The battery-powered tattoo gun was spotless. After he assembled the device he sat back and tugged her shirt up to below her breasts. He looked over her body, obsessed, it seemed, with her skin. She recoiled when he stroked her below the navel. As if the contact were not via his fingers but with the centipede’s crimson legs.

But there seemed nothing sexual about the touch. He was fascinated only with her flesh itself.

She asked, ‘Who was it? That you killed in the water tunnel?’

‘Hey, hold on there!’ Billy said.

Pam winced. Was he going to hit her?

‘I didn’t kill him. Your friend did. Lincoln Rhyme. He’s the one who made the announcement that the water pressure was shut off. But I was suspicious. So I got some insurance. I met a homeless man underground a few days ago. Nathan. One of the mole people. You ever heard about them? I thought it’d be helpful to use him. I gave him a pair of coveralls and did a fast tattoo of a centipede that matched mine, on his left arm. I knew where he hung out – near the Belvedere – so before I drilled into the pipe I found him.

‘I offered him a thousand dollars to help me drill a hole to help me test the water. He agreed. But’ – Billy shook his head – ‘I was right. The city was bluffing about cutting down the pressure. As soon as he drilled through the pipe, the stream of water cut him in half.’ He shivered. ‘There was nothing left of his head and chest. It was pretty tough to see.’

At least he had a spark of sympathy.

‘Knowing that that might’ve been me.’

Or maybe not.

‘That told me it was time to bail. The police’ll find out soon enough it wasn’t me but I’ve bought some time. Okay, time to bleed …’ Then he said something else. She couldn’t quite hear. It seemed to be ‘Oleander.’

He rose, looked her over. Then he bent down and gripped the button of her jeans. Pop, it opened and the zipper came down.

No, no, he wasn’t going to take her. She’d rip his precious skin off with her teeth before he got close. Never.

With a fast sweep, down came the denim.

She tensed, ready to attack.

But he didn’t touch her there. He brushed the smooth flesh of her thighs. He was interested only in finding an appropriate part of her body on which to tattoo his deadly message, it seemed.

‘Nice, nice …’

Pam recalled Amelia talking about the code the killer was tattooing onto his victims. And she wondered what message he was going to leave on her body.

He picked up the gun and turned it on.

Bzzzz.

He touched it to her skin. The sensation was a tickle.

Then came the pain.