The Skin Collector

Pam’s head throbbed even more, the agony increasing, as she struggled for breath. Trapped blood pulsed in her temple and face.

The hallway began to grow dark.

It’s all right, she said to herself. Better this than going back to the militia. Living the way Billy would insist she live. Better than being ‘his woman’.

She thought briefly of her mother, Charlotte, speaking to Pam when the girl was about four.

‘We’re going to New York to do something important, honey. It’ll be like a game. I’m going to be Carol. If you hear somebody call me Carol, and you say, “That’s not her name,” I’ll whip you within an inch of your life. Do you understand me, honey? I’ll get the switch out. The switch then the closet.’

‘Yes, Mommy. I’ll be good, Mommy.’

Then Pam knew she was dying because all around her was light, brilliant light, ruddy light, blinding light. And she nearly laughed, thinking: Hey, maybe I got that God stuff wrong. I’m looking at the glow of heaven.

Or hell, or wherever.

Then she felt weightless, light as could be, as her soul began to rise.

But, no, no, no … It was just that Billy was getting off her, rising, grabbing the box cutter and lifting it.

He was going to slash her throat.

He was mouthing something. She couldn’t hear.

But she clearly heard the two, then three, huge explosions from the front doorway of the apartment building. She saw that the sun was the source of the light: the sun pouring onto her west facing building. And saw two silhouettes, men holding guns. Looking then toward Billy she watched him stagger back, stumbling, clutching his chest. Torn mouth opening wide.

He looked down at her, dropped the box cutter, settled awkwardly into a sitting position, then eased to his side. He blinked, surprised, it seemed. He whispered something. His hands twitched.

Then the officers pushed into the hallway and had her by the arms, lifting her to her feet and pulling her toward the front door. Pam shook them off, though, apparently surprising them with her strength. ‘No,’ she whispered. She turned back and kept her eyes locked on Billy’s until his gaze went unfocused and the pupils glazed. Inhaling hard, she waited a moment longer and then turned and stepped outside, while the officers advanced to Billy’s body, pistols forward and ready – which was, she guessed, procedure, even though it was clear, unquestionably clear, he was no longer a threat.

CHAPTER 73

The medics had finished tending to Pam Willoughby, who walked outside her town house onto the chill, bright street.

From a spot on the curb, where he sat in his rugged Merits wheelchair, Lincoln Rhyme noted that Amelia Sachs started to step forward, arms extending slightly – to embrace her – but then slowed to a stop. She eased back, lowering her hands, when Pam gave no response, other than a formal nod of greeting.

Rhyme asked, ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Getting by,’ said the somber faced young woman – Rhyme could no longer think of her as a girl. He heard how she’d fought the unsub and he was proud of her.

For some reason Pam kept brushing at her legs – the front of her thighs. It reminded him of the compulsive way Amelia Sachs sometimes touched or scratched her own body. She noted him looking and stopped. ‘He tattooed me. But it wasn’t poison. It was a real tat. He had part of his name and mine on his legs, he did the other part on mine.’

Splitters, Rhyme recalled TT Gordon telling them. Lovers who mark portions of their names on each other.

‘I’m …’ She swallowed. ‘I feel pretty creepy.’

‘I know somebody who can get them removed. I’ve got his number.’

If TT Gordon knew how to ink he’d surely know how to de ink.

Pam nodded and rubbed compulsively again. ‘He was telling me all these terrible things. He was, it sounded like he was pla

‘Rule of Skin,’ Rhyme mused. It certainly jibed with the manifesto they pla

If you can find out why he’s so fascinated with skin, that’s key to understanding the case …

Pam continued, ‘And he’d been obsessing about me all these years.’ She explained about the betrothal, about Billy’s coming here a year ago to start pla

‘Do you want to get in the van?’ Rhyme asked, nodding toward the accessible vehicle Thom had driven here. Her place was sealed for the crime scene search and Pam was clearly cold; her nose and eyes red, fingertips too.

‘No,’ Pam said quickly. She seemed more comfortable with the sunlight, despite the frigid air. ‘You caught them all?’

‘Everybody who was here in New York, it seems,’ Rhyme explained. ‘Matthew and Harriet Stanton. Their son, Joshua.’

The search team had found a real ID on the unsub’s body. William Haven, twenty five. A tattoo artist who lived in South Lakes, Illinois.

Rhyme continued, ‘We have people going through all of their documents now, notes, phones, computers. We’ve got a few conspirators in Southern Illinois but there’ll be others. The bombs weren’t set to detonate but they were real: gunpowder, detonators and cell phone triggers. Somebody who knew what they were doing put the IEDs together.’

‘If they were anything like my mother’s underground group, the Patriot Frontier, there’d be dozens of people involved. They were always meeting late at night, sitting in kitchens, drinking coffee, making their fucking little plans …

Lincoln?’ Pam asked.

He raised an eyebrow.

‘How did you know? About Seth? To send the police here?’

‘I didn’t know . But I suspected it when it occurred to me: How did the unsub know about TT Gordon?’

‘Who?’

‘The tattoo artist that you and Seth met in my lab.’

‘Oh, the guy with the weird beard and the piercings.’

‘That’s him. Billy broke into his shop, killed one of his associates. I think he wanted to kill TT but he was out. He might’ve found out about the tattoo artist some other way but that was the simplest explanation – seeing TT in my town house.

‘Since we learned that the motive for the group was domestic terrorism and that there was a tentative co

‘Of course, the unsub had the tattoo of the centipede. Seth didn’t seem to have any inkings; I’d seen him in a short sleeve shirt. What to make of that? And then I remembered the waterproof ink – red ink – on one of the evidence bags. TT told us that some artists use washable pens like that to outline a tattoo first. Maybe that’s what he’d done – a temporary tattoo on his arm to trick us.’

Pam nodded. ‘Yes, exactly. He told me he’d draw it to make people think he was somebody else. Then wash it off when he was playing the role of Seth. It was a homeless man he tattooed with the centipede and paid to drill the hole. He was the one who died in the tu

‘Ah, so that’s who it was.’ Rhyme continued, ‘Then he broke into my town house and tried to poison me. We thought he was an expert with lock picks; there was no sign of jimmying the lock. But of course–’

‘He took the key to your town house off my keychain,’ Pam said, grimacing. ‘Had a copy made.’