The Skin Collector

Matthew shut the TV off. He slipped a nitroglycerin tablet under his tongue. ‘Okay, that’s it. We leave. Now.’

‘What happened, Father?’ Joshua asked.

As if I know.

Harriet was demanding, ‘What happened to Billy?’

Matthew Stanton waved her quiet. ‘Your phones. All of them. Batteries out.’ He popped the back off his while Harriet and Joshua did the same. They threw them into what the Modification Commandments called a burn bag, even though you didn’t really burn it. You pitched it into a Dumpster some distance from your hotel. ‘Now. Go pack. But only the essentials.’

Harriet was saying again, ‘But Billy–?’

‘I told you to pack, woman.’ He wanted to hit her. But there was no time for corrections at this point. Besides, corrections with Harriet didn’t always go as pla

Five minutes later Matthew had filled his suitcase and was zipping up his computer bag.

Harriet was wheeling her luggage behind her into the living room. Her face was a grim mask, nearly as unsettling as the latex one Billy had showed them, the one he’d been wearing when he attacked his victims.

‘How did it happen?’ she asked, fuming.

The answer was the police, the answer was Lincoln Rhyme.

Billy had described him as the man who anticipated everything.

‘I want to find out what happened,’ she raged.

‘Later. Let’s go,’ Matthew snapped. Why was it God’s will that he ended up with a woman who spoke her mind? Would she never learn? Why had he stopped with the belt? Bad mistake.

Well, they’d escape, they’d regroup, go underground once more. Deep underground. Matthew bellowed, ‘Joshua, are you packed?’

‘Yessir.’ Matthew’s son twitched into the room. His sandy hair was askew and his face was streaked with tears.

Matthew growled, ‘You. You act like a man. Understand me?’

‘Yessir.’

Matthew reached into his computer bag, shoved aside the Bible and extracted two pistols, 9mm Smith & Wessons (he wouldn’t think of buying a foreign weapon, of course). He handed one to Josh, who seemed to relax when he took hold of it. The boy was comfortable with weapons; they seemed to offer a familiarity that soothed. At least there was that about him. Guns, of course, weren’t a woman’s way and so Matthew didn’t offer one to Harriet.

He said to his son, ‘Keep it hidden. And don’t use it unless I use mine. Look for my cue.’

‘Yessir.’

The weapons were merely a precaution. Lincoln Rhyme had stopped the plan but there was nothing that would lead back to Matthew and Harriet. The Commandments had taken care to insulate them. It was like what Billy had explained: the two zones in a tattoo parlor, hot and cold. They should never meet.

Well, they’d be in their car and out of the city in thirty minutes.

He surveyed the hotel suite. They had not brought much with them – two suitcases each. Billy and Joshua had moved all the heavier equipment and supplies ahead of time.

‘Let’s go.’

‘A prayer?’ Joshua offered.

‘No fucking time,’ Matthew snapped.

Clutching and wheeling their satchels, the three of them stepped into the corridor.

The good news about using a hotel as a safe house for an operation of this sort was that you didn’t have to sweep it down afterward, Billy’s Commandments had reported – the hotel politely and conveniently supplied a staff of folks to do that for you, disgusting illegals though they undoubtedly were.

Ironically, though, having had that thought, Matthew noted that the two women on the cleaning staff near the elevators, chatting beside their carts, were of the white race.

God bless them.

With Joshua behind them, the husband and wife walked down the corridor. ‘What we’ll do is head north,’ Matthew explained in a whisper. ‘I’ve studied the map. We’ll avoid the tu

‘Roadblocks?’

‘What would they be looking for?’ Matthew snapped, pushing the elevator button. ‘They don’t know us, don’t know anything about us.’

Though this turned out not to be the case.

As Matthew stabbed impatiently at the elevator button, which refused to illuminate, the two God Bless Them They’re White maids reached into their baskets, pulled out machine guns and pointed them at the family.

One, a pretty blonde, screamed, ‘Police! Down! Down on the floor! If we don’t see your hands at all times, we will fire.’

Josh began to cry. Harriet and Matthew exchanged glances.

‘On the ground!’

‘Now!’

Other officers were moving in from the doors. More guns, more screaming.

My Lord, they were loud.

After a moment, Matthew lay down.

Harriet, though, seemed to be debating.

What the hell is she doing? Matthew wondered. ‘Lie down, woman!’

The officers were screaming at her to do the same.

She looked at him with cold eyes.

He raged, ‘I command you to lie down!’

She was going to get shot. Four muzzles were pointed her way, four fingers were curled around triggers.

With a look of disgust, she lowered herself to the carpet, dropping her purse. Matthew lifted an eyebrow when he noted a gun fall out. He wasn’t sure what disappointed him the most – that she had been carrying a gun without his permission, or that she’d bought a Glock, an okay weapon, but one that had been made in a foreign country.

CHAPTER 67

Mention the word ‘terrorism’ and many Americans, perhaps most, think of radicalized Islamists targeting the country for its shady self indulgent values and support of Israel.

Lincoln Rhyme knew, though, that those fringe Muslims were a very small portion of the people who had ideological gripes with the United States and were willing to express those views violently. And most terrorists were white, Christian card carrying citizens.

The history of domestic terrorism is long. The Haymarket bombing occurred in Chicago in 1886. The Los Angeles Times  offices were blown up by union radicals in 1910. San Francisco was rocked by the Preparedness Day bombing, protesting proposed involvement in World War One. And a horse drawn wagon bomb outside J.P. Morgan bank killed dozens and injured hundreds in 1920. As the years went by, the political and social divisiveness that motivated these acts and others continued undiminished. In fact, the terrorist movements grew, thanks to the Internet, where like minded haters could gather and scheme in relative anonymity.

The technology of destruction improved too, allowing people like the Unabomber to terrorize schools and academics and to evade detection for years, and with relative ease. Timothy McVeigh manufactured a fertilizer bomb that destroyed the federal building in Oklahoma City.

Presently, Rhyme knew there were about two dozen active domestic terror groups being monitored by the FBI and local authorities, ranging from the Army of God (anti abortion), to Aryan Nations (white, nationalist neo Nazis), to the Phineas Priesthood (anti gay, anti interracial marriage, anti Semitic and anti taxation, among others), to small one off, disorganized cells of strident crazies called by police ‘garage bands’.

Authorities also kept a watchful eye on another category of potential terror: private militias, of which there’s at least one in every state of the union, with a total membership of more than fifty thousand.

These groups were more or less independent but were joined by common views: that the federal government is too intrusive and a threat to individual freedom, lower or no taxes, fundamentalist Christianity, an isolationist stance when it comes to foreign policy, distrust of Wall Street and globalization. While not many militias put it in their bylaws, they also embrace certain de facto policies like racism, nationalism, anti immigration, misogyny and anti Semitism, anti abortion and anti LGBT.