The Skin Collector

The positioning data would be sent directly to the task force’s mainframe. If the Watchmaker was on the move, they could narrow down the country and region he was traveling through and alert border authorities. Or, if luck was with them, they might find him stationary, enjoying a cool wine on a beach and admiring his stolen bone watch.

Or maybe he’d immediately separate the watch from its duplicitous fob, which he’d mail to Sri Lanka and go on with his plans for whatever heist or murder he was plotting.

So my knowing about this is a gear or a spring or a flywheel in the timepiece of your plan …

The gallery owner continued to be exercised about the break in. He said breathlessly, ‘It’s impossible. The alarms. The locks. The video cameras.’

Rhyme had insisted that there be no lapses in security to make it easier for the Watchmaker to steal the bait; the man would have grown suspicious in an instant and balked.

Heatherly continued, ‘There’s simply no way anybody could have gotten inside.’

But we aren’t dealing with just anybody , Rhyme reflected, and without comment he muttered goodbye to the gallery owner and disco

Now, we wait.

A day, a month, a year …

He wheeled away from the examination tables, glancing at another watch – the Breguet that the Watchmaker had given to Rhyme some years ago.

Rhyme now said to Sachs, ‘Call Pulaski. I want him on the grid at the art gallery.’

She spoke with the officer and sent him to run the scene at Heatherly’s. Rhyme didn’t hold out many hopes of getting any evidence from the theft. Still, the j’s needed to be dotted.

‘Thom,’ Rhyme said, ‘before we go to visit Lon, I’ll have one for the road – a double, if you please.’

He braced for defense. But, for some reason, the aide didn’t object to the consumption of fine, aged – and poison free – single malt whisky. Perhaps he was sympathetic to the fact that, while the criminalist had prevented a terrorist attack, the Watchmaker had slipped away. And Rhyme would probably lose a slick thirty grand in the process.

A glass appeared in the cup holder.

Rhyme sipped the smoky liquor. Good, good.

He sent and answered several emails, to and from tattoo artist TT Gordon, whom Rhyme had taken a liking to. The man was coming over to hang out with the dude in a wheelchair next week. They’d talk about grammar and Samoan culture and life in hipster New York. And who knew what other topics, and projects, might arise?

Mt. Everest and falcons perhaps.

He cocked his head. A crunch of feet on the ice outside. Then a click, the front door lock, more footsteps.

Rhyme took another sip. The sound told the story. Sachs, however, didn’t interpret the sonic evidence and remained wary … until Pam Willoughby turned the corner and paused in the archway.

‘Hey.’ The teen nodded to everyone, unwrapping an impressive scarf from her neck. The day was wind  and sleet free but must’ve been cold. Her pretty nose was pink and her shoulders hunched.

Amelia Sachs’s shoulders, on the other hand, sagged but she managed a smile. She’d be recalling that Pam was going to borrow her foster father’s car to pick up the last of her possessions in the bedroom upstairs.

Silence for a moment. Sachs seemed to take a deep breath. ‘How’s it going?’

‘Okay. Good. Play opens officially next week. Busy. Victorian costumes. They weigh a ton. The dresses.’

Small talk. Pointless talk.

Silence. Sachs said, ‘I’ll help you get your things.’ Nodding toward the stairs.

Pam glanced around the parlor, avoiding eyes. ‘Well, actually, I mean, do you think it’d be okay if I moved back? Just for a while, till I can find someplace new? Didn’t really want to go back to my place in the Heights. Just, you know, everything that happened there. And the Olivettis – they’re great. Only.’ She looked at the floor. Then up. ‘Would that be okay?’

Sachs strode forward and hugged her hard. ‘That’s a question you never need to ask.’

Thom said, ‘You’ve got some things outside to bring in?’

‘In the car. Yeah, I could use some help, sure.’

Thom suited up, do

Sachs pulled on her coat and gloves and followed. She got as far as the arched doorway separating the parlor from the hall. She turned to Rhyme. ‘Wait a minute.’

‘Wait?’ he asked.

She walked closer, tilted her head as if she were gazing at a gangbanger she’d just collared, and looked down. In a soft voice: ‘Thom changed the locks last week. After Billy broke in.’

Rhyme shrugged. A sip of single malt. ‘Uhm.’

‘Well?’

‘Well what?’ he muttered.

‘Pam didn’t knock just now. She let herself in. That means she had one of the new keys.’

‘New keys?’

‘Why are you repeating what I say? How did Pam get a new key? She hasn’t been here for over a week.’

‘Hm. I don’t know. That’s a mystery.’

She shot him a coy glance. ‘Rhyme, if I were to look over your phone log would I find any outgoing calls to Pam recently?’

‘When would I possibly  have had time to chat with anybody? Anyway, I’m hardly a chatterer. Do I seem like a chatterer to you?’

‘That’s evading the question.’

‘If you looked at my log, no, you wouldn’t find any calls to Pam. Recently or unrecently.’

This was true; he’d deleted them.

Of course, he’d forgotten that Sachs might pick up on the conspiracy after he’d messengered Pam the new key a few days ago, after their, all right, ‘chat’.

Sachs gave a laugh, leaned forward and kissed him hard, then headed out the door to help with the move.

Leaving Rhyme to do what he’d been looking forward to for some hours. He wheeled back to the examination table.

On a sterile tray sat a small bit of off white resin or plastic or clay, which had been discovered lodged in the wristwatch band of a banker murdered last night on the Upper East Side. The murder itself wasn’t remarkable – Rhyme was solidly in View of Death Number One mode here – but what struck him as unusual was that the body was found near a construction site between Madison and Park Avenues: The western wall of the foundation was about ten feet from an underground tu

The crime scene indicated that there had been a fierce struggle. It seemed likely that the source of the beige evidence in the watchband had been the killer and that it could tell reams about the man or woman who’d taken the victim’s life.

But until the material was identified and its source determined, that tentative conclusion was a mere wisp of supposition. It had to be either proven valid and recorded on a whiteboard, or proven false and discarded like the autumn leaves now largely stripped from the trees outside his window. Rhyme now prepared a sample for the chromatograph and wheeled to the humming machine, to see which of those two alternatives might prove to be the case.

Acknowledgments

With undying gratitude to: Will and Tina Anderson, Sophie Baker, Sonya Cheuse, Jane Davis, Julie Deaver, Je

About the Author

A former journalist, folksinger and attorney, Jeffery Deaver is an international number one bestselling author. His novels have appeared on bestseller lists around the world, including the New York Times, The Times of London, Italy’s Corriere della Sera , the Sydney Morning Herald and the Los Angeles Times . His books are sold in 150 countries and translated into twenty five languages.