The Skin Collector(Lincoln Rhyme)

Chapter 8





Lincoln Rhyme was waiting impatiently.

He asked Thom, ‘And Amelia?’

The aide hung up the landline. ‘I can’t get through.’

‘Goddamn it. What do you mean you can’t get through? Which hospital?’

‘Manhattan General.’

‘Call them again.’

‘I just did. I can’t get through to the main line. There’re some problems.’

‘That’s ridiculous. It’s a hospital. Call nine one one.’

‘You can’t call emergency to find out the status of a patient.’

‘I’ll call.’

But just then the front door buzzer sounded. Rhyme bluntly ordered Thom to ‘answer the damn bell’ and a moment later he heard footsteps in the front hall.

Two crime scene officers, the ones who’d assisted Sachs at the Chez Nord boutique homicide, entered the parlor, carrying large milk crates, filled with evidence bags – both plastic and paper. Rhyme knew the woman, Detective Jean Eagleston, who nodded a greeting, which he acknowledged a nod. The other officer, a large body-build of a cop, said, ‘Captain Rhyme, an honor to work with you.’

‘Decommissioned,’ Rhyme muttered. He was noting that weather must have been worse – the officers’ jackets were dusted with ice and snow. He noted that they’d wrapped the evidence cartons in cellophane. Good.

‘How is Amelia?’ asked Eagleston.

‘We don’t know anything yet,’ Rhyme muttered.

‘Anything else we can do,’ said her burly male partner, ‘just give us a call. Where do you want them?’ A nod at the crates.

‘Give them to Mel.’

Rhyme was referring to the latest member of the team, who’d just arrived.

Slim and with a retiring demeanor, NYPD Detective Mel Cooper was a renowned forensic lab man. Rhyme would bully anybody, all the way up to and including the mayor, to get Cooper assigned to him, especially for a case like this, in which toxin seemed to be the murder weapon of choice. With degrees in math, physics and organic chemistry, Cooper was perfect for the investigation.

The CS tech cop nodded greetings to Eagleston and her partner, who like him were based in the massive NYPD crime scene oper-ation in Queens. Despite the ornery weather and a chill in the parlor, Cooper wore a short-sleeved white shirt along with baggy black slacks, giving him the appearance of a crusading Mormon elder or high school science professor. His shoes were Hush Puppies. People usually weren’t surprised to learn that he lived with his mother; the astonishment came when they met his towering and beautiful Scandinavian girlfriend, a professor at Columbia. The two were champion ballroom dancers.

Cooper, in a lab coat, latex gloves, goggles and mask, gestured to an empty evidence examination table. His colleagues set the cartons on it and nodded goodbye, then went out once more into the storm.

‘You too, rookie. Let’s see what we’ve got.’

Ron Pulaski pulled on similar protective gear and stepped up to the table to help.

‘Careful,’ Rhyme said unnecessarily, since Pulaski had done this a hundred times and no one was more careful than he with evidence.

But the criminalist was distracted; his thoughts returned to Amelia Sachs. Why wasn’t she calling? He remembered seeing the powder pour into the video camera lens at the same time it hit her face. Remembered her choking.

And then: a key in the door.

A moment later. Wind. A cough. A throat clearing.

‘Well?’ Rhyme called.

Amelia Sachs turned the corner of the parlor, pulling her jacket off. A pause. More coughing.

‘Well?’ he repeated. ‘Are you all right?’

Her response was to guzzle a bottle of water that Thom handed to her.

‘Thanks,’ she said to the young man. Then to Rhyme: ‘Fine,’ her low sultry voice lower and sultrier than normal. ‘More or less.’

Rhyme had known that she hadn’t been poisoned. He’d spoken to the EMT who specialized in toxins as she’d been shepherded to Manhattan General Medical Center. Her symptoms were atypical for poisoning, the med tech had reported, and by the time the ambulance got to Emergency, her only symptoms were a racking cough and teary eyes, which had been flushed several times with water. The unsub had created a less-than-lethal trap – but the irritant might have blinded her or played havoc with the lungs.

‘What was it, Sachs?’

She now explained that swabs of mucous membranes and a lightning-fast blood workup had revealed that the ‘poison’ was dust composed mostly of ferric oxide.

‘Rust.’

‘That’s what they said.’

Pulling the duct tape off an old metal armature to which the unsub had attached the flashlight had dislodged a handful of the stuff, which had poured into Sachs’s face.

As a criminalist, Rhyme was familiar with Fe2O3, more commonly known as iron (III) oxide. Rust is a wonderful trace element since it has adhesive properties and transfers readily from perp to victim and vice versa quite readily. It can be toxic but only in massive quantities – more than 2500 mg/m^3. It’s presence seemed to Rhyme didn’t smell weaponized. He instructed Pulaski to call the city works department to find out if ferric oxide dust was common in the tunnels.


‘Yep,’ the young officer reported after he’d hung up. ‘The city’s been installing pipes throughout Manhattan – because of the new water tunnel. Some of the fixtures they’re cutting away are a hundred and fifty years old. End up with a lot of dust. All their workers’re wearing face masks, it’s so bad.’

So the unsub had just happened to pick one of those fixtures to mount the flashlight to.

Sachs coughed some more, drank another gulp or two of water. ‘I’m pissed off I got careless.’

‘And, Sachs, we were waiting for a phone call.’

‘I tried. The lines were out. One of the EMS techs said it was an Internet problem that’s also screwing up the phone switches. Been happening for the past couple of days. Some dispute between the hardwire cable companies and the new fiber-optic ones. Turf wars. Even talking sabotage.’

Rhyme’s look said, Who cares?

With another faint, alto cough Sachs suited up for the lab and walked to the evidence cartons.

‘Let’s get our charts going.’ Rhyme nodded at the cluster of large whiteboards, standing about like herons on their stalky legs. They used these to list the evidence in a case. Only one was filled: the case of the recent mugging turned homicide near City Hall. The man who’d shaved so carefully for his date before stepping out into the street to be robbed and killed.

Sachs moved that board to the corner and pulled a clean one front and center. She took an erasable marker and asked, ‘What do we call him?’

‘November fifth’s today’s date. Let’s stick with our tradition. Unknown Subject Eleven-Five.’

Sachs coughed once, nodded, then wrote in her precise script:





* * *





237 Elizabeth Street



Victim: Chloe Moore





* * *





Rhyme glanced at the white space. ‘Now let’s start filling it in.’