The Skin Collector(Lincoln Rhyme)

VI

SKIN AND BONE




TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 12

1:00 P.M.





CHAPTER 79





Ron Pulaski had assumed the job of scouring the Berkowitz Funeral Home for evidence and witnesses, searching for any clues that might lead to the Watchmaker.

He seemed to take the failure of his undercover mission to heart, though he could hardly be blamed; the Watchmaker had recognized him immediately. He’d seen the young officer as part of his project in New York a few years ago.

Moreover, Rhyme knew, even if it had been a righteous set, the kid was a pretty bad actor. The best thespians didn’t play characters; they became them.

Gielgud …

So the young officer had collected trace from the documents at the funeral home that Richard Logan – or whatever his real name might be – had signed and where he’d collected the box containing the ashes of the unidentified homeless man from the city morgue. He’d interviewed everyone who’d been at the parlor when the Watchmaker had, including the relatives of someone named Benjamin Ardell, also known as Jonny Rodd, whoever he was. But he’d uncovered no leads.

Nor were there any among the New York Bureau of Investigation agents, who’d also been scammed by the Watchmaker. The agents hadn’t had much contact with ‘Dave Weller’, other than phone calls. And the mobile he’d contacted them on, diming out Pulaski, was, of course, long gone. Batteries in one sewer, snapped-in-half handset in another.

Sachs was handling a different portion of the case, tracking down the insiders who’d helped Logan escape, medical workers, an attendant in the New York City morgue and various prison guards. To Rhyme it seemed they’d taken an astronomical risk. If it was discovered that the Watchmaker was alive, then the ring of suspects would be quite small; they were sure to be detected. But, Rhyme supposed, it wasn’t the Watchmaker’s problem if they didn’t hide the bribes he’d paid them or had failed to come up with credible alibis after they’d faked the medical reports and death certificate.

You have to be smart to earn a few million bucks illegally.

One or two had skipped town but it was only a matter of time until they were tracked down. Not a good idea to use your real credit card when you’re on the lam. Natural selection applies to criminal activity, as well as to newts and simians.

Rhyme was handling part of the investigation too, though not the evidentiary part, curiously. The criminalist had made some meticulous plans of his own.

Probably nothing would come of them but he couldn’t afford to pass up any opportunity.

He now gazed out the window, examining the clime – overcast again, white and gray – and he wondered, Where are you? And what are you up to? Why did you break into the Met? And what part of that plot do you need me alive for?

Thom appeared in the doorway. ‘I talked to Rachel. Leave in an hour?’

‘That’ll do,’ Rhyme replied.

The journey he was referring to would take them to the medical center. Lon Sellitto had regained consciousness. Even in his frail state, the detective remained true to his nature. Rachel reported that his reaction upon swimming into a waking state had been to look down at his belly and mutter, smiling, ‘F*ck, I musta lost thirty pounds.’

Only then had he inquired about the Unsub 11-5 case.

But there were still many questions about his recovery. He had been, and would continue to be, treated with chelation drugs, which bind and deactivate toxins. Recovery is better with patients who’ve had chronic exposure, such as industrial workers (or victims of patiently homicidal spouses), but problematic with acute attacks, as in Sellitto’s case. The jury was still out on the detective’s long-term improvement. Nerve damage, liver and renal issues were possibilities.

Maybe even permanent paralysis.

Time would tell.

Amelia Sachs walked into the parlor. ‘Lon?’ she asked.

‘Leave here in about an hour.’

‘Should we get flowers?’ she asked.

Rhyme muttered, ‘I’ve arranged for flowers once this week. I’m not doing it again.’

Just at that moment the lab phone rang. Sachs, in a position to view caller ID on a monitor, said quickly, ‘Rhyme. I think it’s going down.’

He wheeled closer.

‘Ah.’

Then punched accept call.

‘Yes?’

‘Mr Rhyme, it’s Jason? Jason Heatherly?’ The unnecessarily interrogative words were fast, the voice flummoxed. ‘I’m—’

‘I remember you, Mr Heatherly.’

How could Rhyme not? They’d spoken at length only a week ago.

‘Well, it’s – I don’t know how to explain this – but what you said might happen happened.’

Rhyme and Sachs shared a smile.

‘It’s gone. Impossible but it’s gone. The alarms were set when I left last night. They were set when I got here this morning. Nothing was disturbed. Not a thing out of place. Not. A. Thing. But it’s gone.’

‘Really.’

The ‘it’ the worked-up jeweler was referring to was a watch. The Mikhail Semyonovitch Bronnikov timepiece made entirely of bone.

Contrary to what he’d told the Watchmaker, Rhyme had not believed the man had any connection with the Bone Collector whatsoever. He’d told the Watchmaker that simply to dangle bait.

And how better to snare a man whose strength – and weakness – was time and timepieces than by using a rare watch?

Rhyme had found out that a Bronnikov, one of the few in existence, was in London, though not for sale. But he’d charmed the owner into changing his mind (charm plus twenty thousand dollars, that is) and spent another ten thousand to fly the watch to New York. Ron Pulaski had been the courier.


Rhyme had called Fred Dellray and learned that there was an art dealer under indictment for tax evasion, Jason Heatherly. Dellray got the US attorney to drop a few of the charges if Heatherly cooperated; the feds wanted the Watchmaker back in the slammer as much as Rhyme and the NYPD did.

Heatherly agreed and the watch was delivered to him and put on display in a case in his Upper East Side antiques store/art gallery.

In his conversation with the Watchmaker a week ago Rhyme had brought up the Bone Collector and then casually segued to the Bronnikov watch, mentioning that it was in a gallery in Manhattan. He’d tried to be nonchalant and hoped his delivery was more fluid than Ron Pulaski’s.

Apparently it was.

Several days after the conversation, Heatherly reported that a man had called, inquiring about any watches the gallery might have for sale – though asking nothing specific about the Bronnikov. Heatherly had told him the inventory, including a mention of the bone watch, and the man had thanked him and hung up. Caller ID was Unknown.

Rhyme and a task force had debated how to handle it. The bureau wanted surveillance and a take-down team near the gallery, ready to move in as soon as somebody came in to buy or steal the watch. Rhyme said no. The Watchmaker would spot them instantly. They should take a different approach, more subtle.

So FBI and NYPD surveillance experts had installed a miniature tracker in the metal fob of the watch. The device would remain powered down, undetectable by any radio wave sensors, most of the time. Every two days, it would – for a millisecond – beam its location to the ICGSN, the International Consolidated Geopositioning Satellite Network, which blanketed nearly every populated area on earth. Then go quiescent.

The positioning data would be sent directly to the task force’s mainframe. If the Watchmaker was on the move, they could narrow down the country and region he was traveling through and alert border authorities. Or, if luck was with them, they might find him stationary, enjoying a cool wine on a beach and admiring his stolen bone watch.

Or maybe he’d immediately separate the watch from its duplicitous fob, which he’d mail to Sri Lanka and go on with his plans for whatever heist or murder he was plotting.

So my knowing about this is a gear or a spring or a flywheel in the timepiece of your plan …

The gallery owner continued to be exercised about the break-in. He said breathlessly, ‘It’s impossible. The alarms. The locks. The video cameras.’

Rhyme had insisted that there be no lapses in security to make it easier for the Watchmaker to steal the bait; the man would have grown suspicious in an instant and balked.

Heatherly continued, ‘There’s simply no way anybody could have gotten inside.’

But we aren’t dealing with just anybody, Rhyme reflected, and without comment he muttered goodbye to the gallery owner and disconnected the call.

Now, we wait.

A day, a month, a year …

He wheeled away from the examination tables, glancing at another watch – the Breguet that the Watchmaker had given to Rhyme some years ago.

Rhyme now said to Sachs, ‘Call Pulaski. I want him on the grid at the art gallery.’

She spoke with the officer and sent him to run the scene at Heatherly’s. Rhyme didn’t hold out many hopes of getting any evidence from the theft. Still, the j’s needed to be dotted.

‘Thom,’ Rhyme said, ‘before we go to visit Lon, I’ll have one for the road – a double, if you please.’

He braced for defense. But, for some reason, the aide didn’t object to the consumption of fine, aged – and poison-free – single-malt whisky. Perhaps he was sympathetic to the fact that, while the criminalist had prevented a terrorist attack, the Watchmaker had slipped away. And Rhyme would probably lose a slick thirty grand in the process.

A glass appeared in the cup holder.

Rhyme sipped the smoky liquor. Good, good.

He sent and answered several emails, to and from tattoo artist TT Gordon, whom Rhyme had taken a liking to. The man was coming over to hang out with the dude in a wheelchair next week. They’d talk about grammar and Samoan culture and life in hipster New York. And who knew what other topics, and projects, might arise?

Mt. Everest and falcons perhaps.

He cocked his head. A crunch of feet on the ice outside. Then a click, the front-door lock, more footsteps.

Rhyme took another sip. The sound told the story. Sachs, however, didn’t interpret the sonic evidence and remained wary … until Pam Willoughby turned the corner and paused in the archway.

‘Hey.’ The teen nodded to everyone, unwrapping an impressive scarf from her neck. The day was wind- and sleet-free but must’ve been cold. Her pretty nose was pink and her shoulders hunched.

Amelia Sachs’s shoulders, on the other hand, sagged but she managed a smile. She’d be recalling that Pam was going to borrow her foster father’s car to pick up the last of her possessions in the bedroom upstairs.

Silence for a moment. Sachs seemed to take a deep breath. ‘How’s it going?’

‘Okay. Good. Play opens officially next week. Busy. Victorian costumes. They weigh a ton. The dresses.’

Small talk. Pointless talk.

Silence. Sachs said, ‘I’ll help you get your things.’ Nodding toward the stairs.

Pam glanced around the parlor, avoiding eyes. ‘Well, actually, I mean, do you think it’d be okay if I moved back? Just for a while, till I can find someplace new? Didn’t really want to go back to my place in the Heights. Just, you know, everything that happened there. And the Olivettis – they’re great. Only.’ She looked at the floor. Then up. ‘Would that be okay?’

Sachs strode forward and hugged her hard. ‘That’s a question you never need to ask.’

Thom said, ‘You’ve got some things outside to bring in?’

‘In the car. Yeah, I could use some help, sure.’

Thom suited up, donning his own scarf and a faux-fur Russian Cossack hat. He followed Pam out to the car.

Sachs pulled on her coat and gloves and followed. She got as far as the arched doorway separating the parlor from the hall. She turned to Rhyme. ‘Wait a minute.’

‘Wait?’ he asked.

She walked closer, tilted her head as if she were gazing at a gangbanger she’d just collared, and looked down. In a soft voice: ‘Thom changed the locks last week. After Billy broke in.’

Rhyme shrugged. A sip of single malt. ‘Uhm.’

‘Well?’

‘Well what?’ he muttered.

‘Pam didn’t knock just now. She let herself in. That means she had one of the new keys.’

‘New keys?’

‘Why are you repeating what I say? How did Pam get a new key? She hasn’t been here for over a week.’

‘Hm. I don’t know. That’s a mystery.’

She shot him a coy glance. ‘Rhyme, if I were to look over your phone log would I find any outgoing calls to Pam recently?’

‘When would I possibly have had time to chat with anybody? Anyway, I’m hardly a chatterer. Do I seem like a chatterer to you?’

‘That’s evading the question.’

‘If you looked at my log, no, you wouldn’t find any calls to Pam. Recently or unrecently.’

This was true; he’d deleted them.

Of course, he’d forgotten that Sachs might pick up on the conspiracy after he’d messengered Pam the new key a few days ago, after their, all right, ‘chat’.

Sachs gave a laugh, leaned forward and kissed him hard, then headed out the door to help with the move.


Leaving Rhyme to do what he’d been looking forward to for some hours. He wheeled back to the examination table.

On a sterile tray sat a small bit of off-white resin or plastic or clay, which had been discovered lodged in the wristwatch band of a banker murdered last night on the Upper East Side. The murder itself wasn’t remarkable – Rhyme was solidly in View of Death Number One mode here – but what struck him as unusual was that the body was found near a construction site between Madison and Park Avenues: The western wall of the foundation was about ten feet from an underground tunnel that led, after some maze-like twists, directly to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s underground archives.

The crime scene indicated that there had been a fierce struggle. It seemed likely that the source of the beige evidence in the watchband had been the killer and that it could tell reams about the man or woman who’d taken the victim’s life.

But until the material was identified and its source determined, that tentative conclusion was a mere wisp of supposition. It had to be either proven valid and recorded on a whiteboard, or proven false and discarded like the autumn leaves now largely stripped from the trees outside his window. Rhyme now prepared a sample for the chromatograph and wheeled to the humming machine, to see which of those two alternatives might prove to be the case.





Acknowledgments





With undying gratitude to: Will and Tina Anderson, Sophie Baker, Sonya Cheuse, Jane Davis, Julie Deaver, Jenna Dolan, Cathy Gleason, Jamie Hodder-Williams, Mitch Hoffman, Kerry Hood, Emma Knight, Carolyn Mays, Claire Nozieres, Hazel Orme, Michael Pietsch, Jamie Raab, Betsy Robbins, Lindsey Rose, Katy Rouse, Marissa Sangiacomo, Roberto Santachiara, Deborah Schneider, Vivienne Schuster, Madelyn Warcholik. You’re the best!