The Skin Collector

by Jeffery Deaver

  And she'd tugged at his belt. Playfully but with unyielding determination.

  'Wait, no, Aunt Harriet. What're you doing?' He'd looked up at her with horror; not only was there a strong resemblance to his mother, Harriet's sister, but Harriet and Matthew were his de facto foster parents. Billy's mother and father had died violently, if heroically. Orphaned, the boy had been taken in by the Stantons.

  'Uhm, I don't think I want to, you know, do that,' the boy had said.

  But it was as if he hadn't even spoken.

  The belt had come off.

  And so the bloody years of the Oleander Room began.

  On the trip here to New York, there'd been one liaison between the two of them: the day of Billy's escape from the hospital - where he'd gone not to mod another victim but simply to visit his aunt, ailing uncle and cousin Josh. Billy had hardly been in the mood to satisfy her. (Which is what sex with Aunt Harriet was all about.) But she'd insisted he come to the hotel - Matthew was still in the hospital and she'd sent Joshua out to run some errands. Josh always did what Mommy asked.

  Now, with the washer chugging rhythmically, Billy asked, 'How is he? Josh said he looks pretty good. Just a little pale.'

  'Damn it,' Harriet said bitterly. 'Matthew's going to be fine. He couldn't be courteous and just die.'

  'Would have been convenient,' the young man agreed. 'But it'll be better the way you planned it originally.'

  'I suppose.'

  Better in this sense: After they had completed the Modification here in New York, they'd return to their home in Southern Illinois, murder Matthew and blame it on some hapless black or Latino plucked at random from a soup kitchen in Alton or East St Louis. Matthew would be a martyr and Billy would take over the American Families First Council, building it into the finest militia in the country.

  Billy would be king and Harriet queen. Or queen mother. Well, both really.

  The AFFC was one of dozens of militias around the country all joined in a loose alliance. The names were different but the views virtually identical: state or municipal or - best of all - clan rights over federal, ending the liberal media's lock on propaganda, complete cessation of aid to or intervention in foreign countries, a ban on homosexuality (not just gay marriage), outlawing mixed marriage and supporting separate (and not necessarily equal) doctrines for the races, kicking all immigrants out of the country, a Christ-inspired government, homeschooling. Limitations on non-Christian religious practices.

  Many, many Americans held these views or some of them but the problem such militias faced in expanding membership wasn't their views, but that they were run by people like Matthew Stanton - aging, unimaginative men with no appeal whatsoever except to aging unimaginative men.

  There was no doubt that Uncle Matthew Stanton had been effective in his day. He was a charismatic lecturer and teacher. He believed to his core in the teachings of Christ and of the founding fathers - the devout Christian ones, at least. But he'd never had a win like the Oklahoma City bombing. And his proactive approach to fighting for the cause was the mundane killing or maiming of an abortion doctor occasionally, firebombing a clinic or IRS office, beating up migrant workers or Muslims or gays.

  Harriet Stanton, though, far more ambitious than her husband, knew that the militia would die out within the next decade unless they brought new blood, new approaches to spreading their political message and appealing to a younger, hipper audience. The Modification had been her idea - though spoon-fed slowly to Matthew to make him believe that he'd thought of it.

  As Harriet and Billy had lain on the settee in the Oleander Room several months ago, she'd explained her vision to her nephew. 'We need somebody in charge who can appeal to the new generation. Excitement. Enthusiasm. Creative thinking. Social media. You'll bring the young people in. When you talk about the Rule, they'll listen. The boys will idolize you. The girls'll have crushes. You can get them to do anything. You'll be the Harry Potter of the cause.

  'After Matthew's dead your stock'll be through the roof. We can bring hundreds, thousands of young people into the fold. We'll take over Midwest Patriot Frontier.' This was a legendary militia not far from the AFFC hometown, headed by two visionary leaders. 'And we'll keep going, spread around the country.'

  Harriet believed there were vast swaths of the American people who hated the direction the country was going and would join the AFFC. But they needed to know what dangers were out there - terrorists, Islamists, minorities, socialists. And they needed a charismatic young leader to protect them from those threats.

  Harriet and Billy would save them all.

  There was another reason for the coup. Harriet had limited power in the AFFC as it existed now - since she was, of course, merely a woman, the wife of the founder of the Council. Billy and the new generation believed that discrimination against women deflected from the important issues - of racial segregation and nationalism. As long as Matthew or his kind - the hunting and cigar-smoking sort - were in charge, Harriet would be marginalized. That was simply not acceptable. Billy would empower her.

  Now, in the laundry room, he felt her gaze and finally looked back. This locking of eyes was as he'd remembered it for years. When he was atop her, every time he would press his face into the pillow but she would grip his hair and draw him back until they were pupil-to-pupil.

  She asked, 'Now, what are the police leads like?'

  'We're okay,' Billy said. 'The cops're good. Better than predicted but they bought your description - the Russian or Slav, thirty, round head, light blue eyes. The opposite of me.'

  When Amelia Sachs had 'rescued' Harriet in the hospital, the woman had come up with a false description for the Identi-Kit artist, to lead the police away from her nephew, who'd come to the hospital not to ink another victim to death but merely to visit Matthew.

  Billy asked about his cousin, was he handling everything all right?

  'Josh is Josh,' Harriet said distractedly. Which pretty much described the mother-son relationship in a nutshell. Then she was laughing like a schoolgirl. 'We're having quite a trip to New York, aren't we? Didn't turn out the way we'd planned but I do think it's for the best. After the heart attack, Matthew'll be seen as weak. Easier for him to ... go away when we get back home. God works in mysterious ways, doesn't He?'

  His aunt stepped forward, gripping his arm, and with her other hand brushed fingers across his smooth cheek.

  A light flashed on the washer and it moved to a different portion of the cycle. Harriet looked at the machine with a critical eye. Billy recalled that at home she let clothing dry naturally on lines. He pictured them now, slumped body parts, swaying in the breeze. Sometimes she would bring lengths of clothesline to the Oleander Room.

  He now saw that Harriet's hands were at her hair and the pins were coming out. She was smiling at him again. Smiling a certain way.

  Now? Was she serious?

  But why did he even bother to wonder? Aunt Harriet never kidded. She walked to the laundry room door and closed it.

  The hypnotic rhythm of water sloshing was the only sound in the room.

  Harriet locked the laundry room door. Then snapped out the overhead light.

  CHAPTER 60

  'Bomb Squads are rolling,' Pulaski called.

  'Good. So, did you find it, Mel?'

  Cooper had a Bible pulled up on the main monitor. He was reading. 'Just like you said, Lincoln. In the book of Genesis.'

  'Read it.'

  '"In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights."' Cooper looked up. 'We've got "the six hundredth", "the second", "seventeenth" and "forty". They're all there.'

  'The other book! I need the other book!'

  'Serial Cities?' Cooper asked.

  'What else, Mel? I'm hardly in the mood for Proust, Anna Karenina or Fifteen Shades of Gre
y.'

  'It's Fifty,' Pulaski said and received a withering glance in exchange. 'I'm just saying. It's not like I read it or anything.'

  Amelia Sachs found the true crime book and flipped the slim volume open. 'What should I look up, Rhyme?'

  Rhyme said, 'The footnote. I'm interested in the footnote about our investigation of Charlotte, Pam's mother, and her right-wing militia cell.'

  The bombing in New York that Charlotte had planned out.

  Sachs read the lengthy passage. It detailed how Rhyme, the NYPD and the FBI had investigated the case.

  Rhyme blurted, 'Okay, our unsub maybe does have some affection, if you will, for the Bone Collector. But that's not why Eleven-Five was looking for the book - he wanted to see our techniques in tracking down domestic terror cells. Not psychotics. That was an assumption I made,' Rhyme said, spitting out the noun as if it were an obscenity.

  'A cell hired him to do this?' Pulaski asked.

  'Maybe. Or maybe he's part of the group himself. And the target?' Rhyme gestured at the pictures of the underground crime scenes: 'See the pipes. The ones stamped with DEP. Environmental Protection. Water pipes.'

  Sachs said, 'Waves, the biblical flood. Of course. They want to blow the city's water mains.'

  'Exactly. The crime scenes are in places where the flooding would cause the most damage if the pipes blew.'

  Rhyme turned to Pulaski. 'Thanks, rookie.'

  'You're welcome. I'm still not sure what I did.'

  'You thought those scars around the numbers were waves, not scallops. And they were. Waves! That put me in mind of the flood and Noah. Now we've got an apocalyptic theme going. This changes everything.' Rhyme scanned the evidence chart. His thoughts fell hard, clattering like the sleet outside. Good, good. Moving along.'

  Mel Cooper asked, 'How would the unsub know where the vulnerable spots would be, though? The water grid charts're classified.'

  It was then that Rhyme's mind made one of its unaccountable leaps. They didn't happen often; most deductions are inevitable if you have enough facts. But occasionally, rarely, an insight gelled from the most gossamer of connections.

  'The bit of beard - the one you found here, by the shelf when Eleven-Five ruined my favorite single-malt.'

  Eyes bright, Sachs said, 'We thought it was cross-contamination. But it wasn't. The beard came from Unsub Eleven-Five himself when he broke in here. Because he was the one who killed the worker last week.'

  'To get the keys to his office,' Rhyme said.

  'Why? Where did he work?' From Ron Pulaski.

  'Public works, specifically, Environmental Protection,' Rhyme muttered. 'Which runs the water supply system. The unsub broke in and stole the water grid charts to know where to plant the IEDs. Ah, and the blueprint fiber that the perp left at the scene in Pam's apartment, when he attacked Seth? That was from the plans.'

  Rhyme looked again at the map of the city. He pointed to massive Water Tunnel 3, the biggest public works project in the history of the city. It was one of the most massive sources of water in the world. The tunnel itself was too far underground to be vulnerable. But there were huge distribution lines running from it throughout the city. If they were to blow, billions of gallons of water would gush through Midtown and lower Manhattan. The results would be far worse than any hurricane could produce.

  'Call Major Cases,' Rhyme ordered. 'And Environmental Protection and the mayor. I want the water supply shut down now.'

  CHAPTER 61

  'How are you feeling, Uncle Matthew?'

  'All right,' the man muttered. 'In the hospital you could count on one hand the number of people who spoke English. Lord have mercy.'

  That, Billy was sure, wasn't accurate. And was typical of exactly the attitude that the AFFC had to guard against. The issue wasn't that the hospital workers didn't speak English; of course they did. It was that they spoke it with thick accents, and not very well. And that, like the color of their skin, was proof that they came from cultures and nations that didn't represent proper values. And that they hadn't bothered to assimilate.

  'Well, you're back and looking good.' He sized up the older man - 190 pounds, slightly damaged cardiac system, but healthy otherwise. Yep, it seemed he'd live forever ... or until Billy put a bullet in his uncle's head and then propped the gun in the hand of some hapless day laborer, whom Billy and a half-dozen others had already clubbed to death in 'self-defense'.

  'He's doing just fine,' Harriet said, her voice light as mist as she stowed freshly washed and folded laundry. 'Back to normal.'

  'Hey, bro.' Joshua Stanton joined them from the bedroom in the small suite. When Joshua heard voices from nearby he tended to appear quickly, as if he couldn't stand the thought that a conversation was occurring without his presence. He may also have worried that people were saying things about him, though really there was very little to say about Joshua, except that the twenty-two-year-old was a competent plumber's assistant whose main talent was killing birds and deer and abortion doctors.

  Still the solidly built man, strawberry blond, was dependable to the point of irritation, doggedly doing what he'd been told and reporting regularly in great depth about his progress. Billy wasn't quite sure how he'd found a wife and managed to father four children.

  Well, dogs and salamanders were capable of the same. Though then he had trouble dislodging the image of Josh as a lizard.

  Joshua hugged his cousin, which Billy would have preferred he not do. Not germs; that transfer of evidence matter.

  I try, M. Locard.

  No, Joshua wasn't the brightest bulb. But he'd been key in the Modification. After Billy had killed the victims, and the bodies had been discovered, Joshua, dressed in medical coveralls and face mask, had quickly appeared, carting into the tunnels the lights and batteries containing the bombs, set them up and vanished. Nobody thought twice about him. An emergency worker.

  The young man now prattled on about his success in the masquerade, smuggling the devices into the crime scenes. He kept looking Billy's way for approval, which his younger cousin gave in the form of a nod.

  Harriet glanced at her son with a dip of eyelid, which Billy knew meant Quiet. But Joshua missed it. And kept talking.

  'It was pretty close at the Belvedere. I mean really. There were cops everywhere! I had to go through a different manhole than was in the plan. It added another six minutes but I don't think it was a problem.'

  The look from Aunt Harriet again.

  Matthew didn't need the patience that women in the AFFC were required to display. He snapped, 'Shut up, son.'

  'Yessir.'

  Billy was troubled by his uncle's and aunt's treatment of his cousin. Matthew was just plain mean and it was pathetic how Josh simply took it. As for Harriet, she largely ignored him. Billy sometimes wondered if she ever took her own son to the Oleander Room. He'd concluded no. Not because that would be too perverse. Rather because Josh probably didn't have the stamina to meet his mother's needs; even Billy could manage only three times an afternoon and Harriet occasionally seemed disappointed by that low sum.

  Billy liked Joshua. He had fond memories of the years spent with him, his de facto brother. They'd tossed footballs and played catch because they thought they ought to. They'd flirted with girls for the same reason. They'd tinkered with cars. Finally in a moment of adolescent candor they admitted they didn't really like sports or cars and were lukewarm about dating. And took up more enjoyable activities - stalking faggots and beating the crap out of them. Illegals, too. Or legals (they still weren't white). Graffiti'ing crosses on synagogues and swastikas on black churches. They'd burned an abortion clinic to the ground.

  Billy's watch hummed. 'It's time.' A few seconds later, another vibration.

  Uncle Matthew looked at the backpack and gear bag. He announced, 'We'll pray.'

  The family got down on their knees, even unsteady Matthew, and Harriet and Joshua took positions on either side of Billy. They all held hands. Harriet was gripping Billy's. She sque
ezed his once. Hard.

  Matthew's voice - a bit weak but still powerful enough to split open sinners' hearts - intoned, 'Lord, we thank You for giving us the wisdom and the courage to do what we are about to do, in Your name. We thank You for the vision You put into our souls and for the plans You've delivered into our hands. Amen.'

  'Amen' echoed through the room.

  CHAPTER 62

  Rhyme wheeled back and forth before the whiteboards in his parlor.

  He glanced at the water main grid chart, which the DEP had just sent them via secure server, then back to the evidence. Water Tunnel 3 and all the branches were clearly diagrammed.

  Ron Pulaski called, 'We've got our Bomb Squad at the boutique and the restaurant. The army has their people at the third site - the Belvedere.'

  'Are they making a big scene?' Rhyme asked, half-attentive. 'Are all the lights and sirens going?'

  'I--'

  Rhyme cut him off. 'Is there any evacuation from downtown? I wanted the mayor to order an evacuation.'

  'I don't know.'

  'Well, put on the news and find out. Thom! Where the hell--?'

  'I'm here, Lincoln.'

  'The news. I need the news on! I asked you.'

  'You didn't ask. You thought you asked.' The aide lifted a chastising eyebrow.

  'Maybe I didn't ask,' Rhyme grumbled. The best 'sorry' the man was going to get. 'But turn the fucking thing on now.'

  In the corner the Samsung clicked to life.

  Rhyme stabbed a finger at the screen. 'Breaking News, News Alert, This Just In, We Interrupt This Program. Why aren't I seeing those? ... I'm looking at a fucking commercial for car insurance!'

  'Don't use your arm for useless gestures.' Thom changed the channel.

  '... press conference ten minutes ago the mayor told citizens of Manhattan and Queens that an evacuation would not be necessary at this time. He urged people--'

  'No evacuation?' Rhyme sighed. 'He could at least have cleared Queens. They can go east. Plenty of room on Long Island. Orderly evacuation. He could've arranged for that.'

  Mel Cooper said, 'It wouldn't be orderly, Lincoln. It'd be chaos.'