The Skin Collector

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 pla

‘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 co

‘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 pla

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 tu

‘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 a