The Skin Collector

‘That’s what I was thinking, yes. Was he the unsub? I couldn’t say for sure, of course, but I wasn’t going to take any chances. I called Dispatch and had some patrolmen get over here right away.’

Sachs said, ‘And the attack here yesterday. He faked it.’

‘Injected himself with a bit of propofol, then cuffed himself. He dropped the bottle of poison and the syringe on the floor and lay down to take a nap until the police showed up.’

‘Why?’ Pam asked.

Sachs added, ‘Wanted to keep suspicion off him. What better way than becoming a victim himself?’

Rhyme said, ‘And, I have to admit, our profilers contributed. Did some research that said centipedes in art and fiction represent an invasion of a safe, comfortable space. They lie in wait, invisible. That was Seth. Well, Billy.’

‘Sure was.’ Pam’s still eyes swiveled back to her apartment. She frowned, pulled a tissue from her pocket and licked it. She scrubbed away a smear of blood on her cheek.

Sachs, the lead investigator on the case, now that Lon Sellitto was out of commission, spent about twenty minutes debriefing the girl, with Rhyme nearby. They learned that Billy, with Pam in tow, had pla

Ron Pulaski finished walking the grid in Pam’s apartment – even if you stop the perp in the most absolute sense possible, as here, you still go through the formalities. When he was finished he bundled up the evidence, signed the chain of custody cards and told Rhyme he’d get everything to the town house. The ME team carted away the body. With eyes cool as the air, Pam watched the gurney wheeled to the van.

Rhyme, then, was concentrating on Sachs. When she and Pam had been talking about what had just happened, the policewoman had occasionally tried to joke or offer words of sympathy. Pam responded with a formal smile that might as well have been a sneer. The expression cut Sachs deeply, it was clear.

A pause as Sachs stood, hands on hips, looking over the town house. She said to Pam, ‘The scene’s clear. Help you clean up, you want.’

Rhyme noted that she was hesitating, and the tone in her voice told him that she regarded this question as perilous.

‘Think I’ll just head over to the Olivettis, you know. And maybe sometime this week I’ll borrow Howard’s car, come over to the town house and pick up what’s left. That okay, Lincoln?’

‘Sure.’

‘Wait,’ Sachs said firmly.

Pam regarded her defiantly.

The detective continued, ‘I want you to see somebody about this. Talk to them.’ She dug into her purse. ‘This’s Terry Dobyns. He works for the NYPD but he can hook you up with somebody.’

‘I don’t–’

‘Please. Do it.’

A shrug. The card disappeared into her back pocket, where her cell phone rested.

Sachs said, ‘You need anything, give me a call. Anytime.’ A whiff of desperation that was hard to hear.

The girl said nothing but walked inside and returned with a backpack and a computer bag. White wires ran from ears to iPod and were tucked up under a bulky hat.

The girl waved in the direction of Rhyme and Sachs but to neither in particular.

Sachs stared after her.

After a moment Rhyme said, ‘People hate to be proven wrong, Sachs, even when it’s for their own good. Especially  then maybe.’

‘So it seems.’ In the cold she was rocking back and forth, watching Pam disappear in the distance. ‘I broke it, Rhyme.’

It was moments like this when Rhyme detested his disability the most. He wanted nothing more than to walk up to Sachs and wrap his arms around her shivering shoulders, hold her as tightly as he could.

‘How’s Lon?’ Rhyme asked.

‘He came out of the crisis. But still unconscious. Rachel’s in bad shape. Lon’s son is there.’

‘I talked to him,’ Rhyme told her.

‘He’s a rock. Really come into his own.’

‘Headed back to the town house?’

Sachs replied, ‘In a bit. I’ve got to meet with a witness about the Metropolitan Museum investigation.’

Sellitto’s other case, the break in at the museum on Fifth Avenue. With the detective in the hospital, other Major Cases officers were taking over. Now that the AFFC terror plot had been stopped, it was time to resurrect the politically important, if mysterious, case.

Sachs walked to her Torino. The engine fired up with a blast of horsepower and she peeled away from the curb, raising smoke whose blue tint turned violet in the red light from the low sun.

CHAPTER 74

Lincoln Rhyme wasn’t happy he’d missed the deduction about the identity of the unsub; it was a search of the body and Pam’s explanation that were the source of information about Billy Haven.

‘I should’ve guessed it, though,’ he said to Cooper and Pulaski.

‘What?’ Pulaski set down the plastic bag from which he’d been tweezing evidence and turned to Rhyme.

‘That Billy was somebody close to the Stantons. Harriet’s reaction? When Amelia told her he was dead? She got hysterical. Which should have told me she knew him well. Very  well. The son too, Joshua – I thought he was going to faint when he heard. I could have deduced that even if the unsub wasn’t part of the immediate family, he was in the extended. We know he’s the nephew, we know his name. But get the rest of the details on Mr William Haven, rookie. Stat.’

‘Latin, from statim , meaning immediately,’ Pulaski said.

‘Ah, yes, that’s right. You’re a student of the classics. And, I remember, a student of crime films in which digressive banter is used to distract from faulty plotting and character development. E.g. , those grammatically correct hit men you were referring to. So shall we get going on the task at hand?’

‘Exempli gratia ,’ Pulaski muttered and began typing fast on his keyboard.

A few minutes later, he looked up from the computer screen. ‘Negotium ibi terminetur ,’ he said with a tone of finality.

‘The job is finished,’ Rhyme translated. ‘More elegant to say, “Factum est .” Has a nicer ring. That’s the problem with Latin. It sounds like you’re chewing on rocks. Bless the Italians and Romanians for pulling the language out of the fire.’

Pulaski read from the screen. ‘Matthew Stanton was an only child. But Harriet had a sister, Elizabeth. Married Ebbett Haven. They had a son, William Aaron. Ebbett was an elder with the AFFC but he and his wife died when the boy was young.’ He looked up. ‘In the Branch Davidian standoff. They were there to sell guns to the Davidians and got caught inside during the siege.

‘William went to live with Aunt Harriet and Uncle Matthew. Went by Billy mostly. He’s got a record – juvie, so there are no prints on record; it was sealed. The case was an assault charge. Hate crime. Billy beat up a Jewish boy at school. Then used an ice pick and ink to tattoo a swastika on the kid’s forearm. He was ten. There’s a picture. Check it out.’

The tattoo was pretty well done. Two color, shaded, razor sharp lines, Rhyme noted.

‘Then he studied art and political science at the University of Southern Illinois. Then, for some reason, opened a tattoo parlor.’

In Billy’s backpack were receipts for two apartments in town. One was in Murray Hill, in the name of Seth McGui

These boxes and their eerie lights now sat in Rhyme’s parlor, against the far wall. Well, all but one. That was the sealed terrarium that had housed the botulinum spores. The bio chem folks from Fort Detrick had decided it was best to take control of that one. Normally possessive of evidence, Rhyme had not made an issue of that particular box being handed off.