The Skin Collector

And the poison, Rhyme had concluded, would be botulinum – since they’d found traces of the material from cosmetic surgical supply houses and the Botox syringes. Rhyme had thought the plastic surgery evidence meant their unsub was pla

Rhyme had called his FBI contact, Fred Dellray, and City Hall and explained what he suspected. The mayor and police chief had in turn ordered the DEP to a

As she sat impatiently behind the wheel of her car, the engine growling, Sachs’s phone rang once more. It was Rhyme. ‘Where are you, Sachs?’

‘Almost at the spot DEP gave us.’

‘Listen to me.’

‘What else would I be doing?’ she muttered. And concentrated on avoiding an idiot of a bicyclist.

Rhyme continued, ‘I’ve just been on the phone with the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. We conferenced – forgive the verb – with Homeland Security and the bio chem weapons people at Fort Detrick. It’s worse than I thought. Don’t go into the access room. We’re getting a tactical hazmat team together.’

‘I’m here , Rhyme. Now. I can’t just sit around and wait. The unsub’s right underneath me.’

She pulled the muscle car up on the sidewalk, scooting pedestrians out of the way. They complied; she looked far too fierce to argue.

Rhyme continued, ‘I just realized that this isn’t ordinary botulinum.’

‘Now, that’s a phrase you don’t hear every day, Rhyme.’

‘It’s been modified to be chlorine resistant. That’s why we found the undiluted hypochlorous acid – what he was using to alter the strain. We have no idea how potent it is.’

‘I’ll be wearing face mask and coveralls.’ She ran to the back of her car, popped the trunk and yanked out her crime scene kit.

‘You need full biohazard gear,’ he protested.

She hit speaker, set the phone down and called, ‘The unsub knows we haven’t cut the supply yet – the water’ll still be spurting out of the hole he drilled. He’s waiting for the valves to close but he’s not going to wait very long. He’ll rabbit, with who knows how much of that shit.’

‘Sachs, listen. This isn’t arsenic or snakeroot. You don’t have to drink it or eat it. One ten thousandth of a gram in a mucous membrane or wound’ll kill you.’

‘Then I won’t pick my nose or scrape my knee. I’m going in, Rhyme. I’ll call when I’ve cleared the scene and got him in metal.’

‘Sachs–’

‘For this one I need to go in quiet,’ she said firmly and clicked disco

CHAPTER 65

Amelia Sachs easily found where the unsub had gone underground: the manhole on 44th Street, near Third, which Pulaski had told her about.

She dug the tire iron out of the trunk of her Torino and used it to muscle the heavy metal disk up and then managed to push the cover to the side. She aimed her Glock into the pitch black hole. She peered down, hearing a powerful hissing noise – the leaking pipe, she assumed. She holstered her weapon.

Well, let’s get to it. Go and go fast.

When you move, they can’t getcha …

Thanks to the recent medical procedures, she now felt lithe as a thirteen year old as she turned and began down the ladder.

Thinking: I’m in bright white coveralls, lit from above and behind.

A perfect shooting solution for him.

One way to put it. The other was: sitting duck.

Climbing into hell. Practically sliding down the rails as she’d seen sailors do on some TV submarine movie, going from deck to deck.

She hit the floor of the spacious tu

That she hadn’t pulled any fire didn’t allay her concern; he might still be near, aiming her way and waiting for any other officers to enter the target zone before he began squeezing off rounds.

But as her eyes grew accustomed to the dark, she noted that this portion of the tu

Heart tapping, breath loud through the mask, Sachs peered in the direction of the hiss, which was now a piercing sound. She moved up to the wall on the other side of which was the access chamber where he’d drilled the hole in the pipe. She glanced in fast, low, in case he was aiming head or chest toward the doorway. All she could see in the one second look was mist roiling in shifting curtains, pastel colors, like the northern lights. It was backlit by a muted white lamp – maybe one the unsub had set up to illuminate his drilling. The hypnotic swirls, beautiful, would be from the particulates of streaming water flowing from the pipe.

Sachs was reluctant to do a typical one person dynamic entry, look high, go in low, two pounds’ pressure on a three pound trigger. Shoot, shoot, shoot.

Not here. She knew she had to take him alive. He wasn’t operating on his own, not with a plan this elaborate. They needed to collar his co conspirators, too.

Also, any weapons discharges might mean she’d end up shooting herself; the pipe and the concrete surfaces of the tu

Not to mention what a 9mm parabellum round would do to a vial containing the deadliest toxin on earth.

Closer, closer.

Peering into the wall of mist, looking for shadows moving, shadows in position to fire a weapon. Shadows charging out with a hypodermic syringe loaded with propofol.

For his final skin art session.

But nothing other than the shimmering particles of water vapor, refracting light so beautifully.

Into the chamber, she told herself. Now.

The cloud rolled closer and withdrew, surely from the breeze created by the stream of water. Good cover, she thought. Like a smoke screen. Sachs gripped the Glock and, with her feet in a perpendicular shooting position, not parallel, to minimize his target area, she moved fast into the room.

A mistake, she realized quickly.

The spray was much thicker inside and soaked the filter of the mask. She couldn’t breathe. A moment’s debate. Without the protection, she’d be susceptible to the botulinum toxin. With it, she’d pass out from lack of air.

No choice. Off came the mask and she flung it behind her, inhaling the damp air, which, she hoped, contained only New York city drinking water and not poison powerful enough to kill her in all of five seconds.

Breathing, breathing …

But so far, no symptoms. Or bullets.

She continued forward, swinging the gun from side to side. To her right she could see the dark form of the massive pipe; the puncture was about fifteen feet in front of her, she guessed; from a vague image of a thin white line – the stream of water – shooting up to the left and hitting the far wall about ten feet off the ground. The hiss grew louder with every step.

The whistle made her ears throb with pain and threatened to deafen; the good news was that it would also deafen him, so he wouldn’t sense her approach.

Smells of moist concrete, mold, mud. The sensation took Sachs back to her childhood, father and daughter at the zoo in Manhattan, one of the houses, reptile. ‘Amie, see that? That’s the most dangerous thing here.’