The Skin Collector

by Jeffery Deaver

  'The Modification? You coined the word?'

  'That was mine, yes. Though I was inspired by Billy's avocation. Body modifying. It suited their apocalyptic views. I was embarrassed actually. Too on the nose. But they liked the sound.

  'You dictated it to Billy, the whole plan?'

  'That's right. And his aunt. But Billy wrote it down. They came to visit me in prison. The cover was that Billy was writing a book about my life.' He paused. 'There's a story I've been dying to tell but haven't found the appropriate listener. I think you'll appreciate it, Lincoln. When I was finished giving him the plan and he'd written it all down, I said, "It's all yours, Moses. Go forth." Billy and Harriet didn't get it. I know you're familiar with the theological concept of God as a watchmaker.'

  When contemplating the origin of the universe, Isaac Newton, Rene Descartes and others of the Scientific Revolution in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries argued that design requires a designer. If something as complex as a watch could not exist without a watchmaker, by analogy human life in the universe - far more complicated than a timepiece - surely could not exist without a God.

  'I had to explain that, given my nickname, dictating The Modification was as if I were God, handing down the Ten Commandments to Moses. I meant it as a joke. But they took it seriously. They started to refer to the plan as the Modification Commandments.' He clicked his tongue. 'I feel sorry for those who don't appreciate irony. But to get back to the issue: how you found out about me ... If you're willing to share.'

  'Of course.'

  'You had the notebook. But it wasn't in my handwriting; that was Billy's. No fingerprints or DNA. I never touched it. And, yes, there were a lot of references to critical timing - when to administer the poison and where, the diversionary attacks, when to have Joshua, Billy's cousin, get the batteries and lights in the underground passages where the crimes occurred, how many minutes after someone had called nine one one could the police be counted on to arrive. It's all in the timing, of course. But leaping from that to my escape from prison?'

  Rhyme wondered where the man was standing, what his posture was. Was he outside, cold? Or outside, hot, in balmy weather? 'Nemesis' was an imprecise term, not to mention melodramatic. But Rhyme allowed himself to think of the Watchmaker this way. He said, 'Evidence.'

  'That doesn't surprise me, Lincoln. But what?'

  'The tetrodotoxin. We found traces.' The super poison from the fugu fish.

  'Oh, my ...' A sigh from the other end of the line. 'I told Billy to destroy any residue.'

  'I'm sure he tried. There was just a minuscule amount of trace at one of the scenes.' Rhyme, of all people, knew how difficult it was to banish all whispers of a substance. 'We didn't find any in his safe house, so where had it come from? I checked VICAP and nobody had used it in any crimes that had been reported in the last few years. So what could Billy have been doing with tetrodotoxin? Then it occurred to me: A clue was its nickname, the zombie drug. To induce the appearance of cardiac arrest and death.'

  'That's right,' the Watchmaker admitted. 'Billy delivered some, smuggled in the pages of a book. In prison they check for shivs and heroin, not milligrams of fish ovary. I used it to fake the heart attack and get transferred to the hospital in White Plains.'

  Was that a seagull cawing in the background? And then, a ship's horn? No, a foghorn. Interesting. They were little used in this day of radar and GPS. Rhyme took note. A flare on his computer screen. It was a message from Rodney Szarnek, the computer crimes expert. It reported that the analysis of the Watchmaker's call to Rhyme had been unsuccessful; it had skidded to a stop at an anonymous proxy switch in Kazakhstan.

  Rhyme had lied about the phone trace.

  He gave a mental shrug - nothing ventured, nothing gained - and returned to the conversation. 'What finally convinced me, though, was a mistake you made.'

  'Really?'

  'When you were on the street with Ron Pulaski, you referred to the attempted hit in Mexico on the federal police official. The project you'd put together a few years ago.'

  'Right. I wanted to mention something specific. For credibility.'

  'Ah, but that case was sealed. If you were a legitimate lawyer who'd never met Richard Logan, like you claimed, you'd have had no idea about the Mexico City job.'

  A pause. Then: 'Sealed?'

  'Apparently the State Department and the Mexican Gabinete Legal were not happy that you - an American - had come minutes away from killing a high-ranking Mexican law enforcer. They preferred to act as if the incident had never happened. There was no press about it.'

  'Oh.' He sounded bitter.

  Rhyme said, 'Now answer me a question.'

  'All right.'

  'How did you get the gig? For the Stantons and their AFFC?'

  'It was time to get out of prison. I got in touch with the people who'd been involved in the domestic terror incident a few years ago when you and I went head-to-head. Remember?'

  'Of course.'

  'They set me up with the AFFC - another white supremacist militia. I told them I could put them on the map. Harriet and Billy came to visit me in prison and I laid out a plan. By the way, did you ever see them together, those two, aunt and nephew? Uneasy dynamic there. Gives a whole new meaning to the name American Families First.'

  Rhyme demurred. The observation, true or not, didn't interest him.

  The Watchmaker continued, 'They wanted to make a name for themselves. So we brainstormed. I came up with the idea of botulism in the drinking water. I learned that Billy was a tattoo artist. We'd tattoo victims with an Old Testament message. Apocalypse, I was saying. They just love that kind of rhetoric. Striking a blow for their idiotic values. They loved it too when I suggested they use poisons as the murder weapons. Justice for the minority and socialist values that were poisoning society, et cetera, et cetera. Oh, they just lapped that up. Well, Matthew did. Billy and Harriet seemed a bit more tempered. You know, Lincoln, the small-minded are the most dangerous.'

  Not necessarily, the criminalist reflected, considering the man he was conversing with at the moment.

  CHAPTER 78

  'So,' Rhyme continued, 'in exchange for your plan they slipped you some of the tetrodotoxin. And arranged to bribe medical personnel and prison guards, so you'd be declared dead and smuggled out of the lockup. And found some homeless corpse to be shipped to the funeral home for cremation.'

  'More or less.'

  'Must have been pricey.'

  'Twenty million cash total.'

  'And the funeral home charade? With you as Weller. Why that?'

  'I knew you'd send somebody to see who was collecting the ashes. I had to make you believe in your heart that the Watchmaker was dead. The best way to do that was to have the family's indignant lawyer come to town to collect his ashes ... and report your undercover officer to the authorities. That was a wonderful turn. Didn't anticipate that.'

  Rhyme then said, 'But one thing I don't understand: Lon Sellitto. You poisoned him, of course. You borrowed a fireman's outfit at the site of the Belvedere Apartment attack and gave him the laced coffee.'

  'You figured that out too?'

  'Arsenic is metalloid poison. Billy used only plant-based toxins.'

  'Hm. Missed that. Mea culpa. Tell me, Lincoln, were you one of those boys who read children's puzzle books and could always spot what was wrong with this picture?'

  Yes, he had been, and, yes, he could.

  Rhyme added, 'And you slipped the doctored painkillers into Amelia Sachs's purse.'

  A dense pause. 'You found those?'

  The minute Rhyme had deduced the Watchmaker was still alive and was probably behind Lon's attack, he'd told Sachs, Pulaski and Cooper to be on the lookout for any attacks. She'd recalled that someone had sat near her in a coffeehouse where she'd been meeting with a witness in the Metropolitan Museum case. She'd found a second bottle of painkillers in the bag.

  Rhyme asked, 'Arsenic as well? The results aren't back yet.'

 
; 'I'll tell you, since you've figured it out. Antimony.'

  Lincoln Rhyme said, 'See, that's what I don't follow: trying to kill Lon and Amelia and blame the deaths on the Stantons? It was you dressed up like Billy Haven at the scenes? Looking at her through the manhole cover on Elizabeth Street? Outside the restaurant in Hell's Kitchen? In the building near the Belvedere?'

  'That's right.'

  'So why ...?' His voice faded. The thoughts were coming fast, exploding like firecrackers. 'Unless ...'

  'Catching on, are you, Lincoln?'

  'Twenty million dollars,' he whispered. 'To buy your freedom. There is no way the Stantons and the AFFC could have gotten you that much money to bribe the guards and medics. No, no - they're a shoestring operation at best. Someone else financed your escape. Yes! Somebody who needed you for another job. You used the AFFC as a cover for something else.'

  'Ah, that's my Lincoln,' said the Watchmaker.

  The voice was condescending and a moment's anger burst. But then the thought landed and he laughed out loud. 'Lon. Lon Sellitto! He was the whole point of this. You needed him killed or out of commission, and you used the AFFC as a scapegoat.'

  'Exactly,' the man whispered. And the tone of his voice taunted: Keep going.

  'The case he'd been working on. Of course. The breakin at the Metropolitan museum. He was getting close to finding out what it was all about and your employer needed to stop him.' He considered other facts. 'And Amelia too. Because she'd taken over the Met case ... But you're admitting it all now,' Rhyme said slowly, troubled. 'Why?'

  'I think I'll let it go at that, Lincoln. Probably not good to say much more. But I will tell you that nobody is at risk anymore. Amelia's safe. The only reason to poison her or Ron or your brilliant nerdy assistant, Mel Cooper, would be to shift the blame to the AFFC. And obviously that's pointless now. Besides, I've changed tack.'

  Rhyme pictured the man shrugging.

  'You're safe too, of course. You always have been.'

  Always have been?

  Rhyme gave a laugh. 'The anonymous phone call about somebody's breaking into my town house through the back door. When Billy snuck in to poison my whisky. That was you.'

  'I was keeping tabs on him. The night he went to your town house, I was following. He wasn't supposed to kill you, hurt you in any way. When he changed into a workman's uniform and got a needle ready, I knew what he was up to.'

  This made no sense at all.

  Until a moment later another deduction. Rhyme whispered, 'You need me for something. You need me alive. Why? To investigate a crime, of course. Yes, yes. But which one? One committed recently?' What open major cases were there? Rhyme wondered. Then realized. 'Or one that's going to happen? Next week?'

  'Or next month or next year,' the Watchmaker offered, sounding amused.

  'The Metropolitan museum breakin? Or something else?'

  No word.

  'Why me?'

  A pause. 'I'll just say that the plan I've put together needs you.'

  'And it needs me to be aware of it,' Rhyme shot back. 'So my knowing is a gear or a spring or a flywheel in your timepiece.'

  A laugh. 'How well put. It's so refreshing to talk to somebody who gets it ... But now I should be going, Lincoln.'

  'One last question?'

  'Of course. Answering may be a different matter.'

  'You told Billy to find that book, Serial Cities.'

  'That's right. I needed to make sure he and the Stantons appreciated how good you were - and how much you and Amelia had learned about the militias and their tactics.'

  Rhyme said ruefully, 'You had no particular interest in the Bone Collector? I got that wrong.'

  'I guess you did.'

  A laugh and Rhyme said, 'So the connection I found between the Bone Collector and you wasn't there at all?'

  A pause.

  'You found a connection between us?' The Watchmaker sounded curious.

  'There's a famous watch on display here in Manhattan. It's made entirely out of bone. Some Russian, I think. I wondered if stealing that was on your agenda.'

  'There's a Mikhail Semyonovitch Bronnikov in town?'

  'I think that was it. And you didn't know?'

  The Watchmaker said, 'I've been rather ... preoccupied lately. But I'm familiar with the piece. It's quite astonishing. Mid-1860s. And you're right: made entirely of bone, one hundred percent.'

  'I suppose it wouldn't make sense for you to risk getting caught - and waste the time, so to speak - trying to break into a Manhattan antiques store to steal a watch.'

  'No, but it was creative thinking, Lincoln. Just what I'd expect of you.' Another pause. Rhyme imagined that he was checking his own timepiece. 'Now I think it's best to say goodbye, Lincoln. I've been on the line a little too long. Sometimes those proxies and phone switches can be traced, you know. Not that you'd ever try.' A chuckle. 'Till we meet again ...'

  Next week, next month, next year.

  The line went dead.

  VI

  SKIN AND BONE

  TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 12

  1:00 P.M.

  CHAPTER 79

  Ron Pulaski had assumed the job of scouring the Berkowitz Funeral Home for evidence and witnesses, searching for any clues that might lead to the Watchmaker.

  He seemed to take the failure of his undercover mission to heart, though he could hardly be blamed; the Watchmaker had recognized him immediately. He'd seen the young officer as part of his project in New York a few years ago.

  Moreover, Rhyme knew, even if it had been a righteous set, the kid was a pretty bad actor. The best thespians didn't play characters; they became them.

  Gielgud ...

  So the young officer had collected trace from the documents at the funeral home that Richard Logan - or whatever his real name might be - had signed and where he'd collected the box containing the ashes of the unidentified homeless man from the city morgue. He'd interviewed everyone who'd been at the parlor when the Watchmaker had, including the relatives of someone named Benjamin Ardell, also known as Jonny Rodd, whoever he was. But he'd uncovered no leads.

  Nor were there any among the New York Bureau of Investigation agents, who'd also been scammed by the Watchmaker. The agents hadn't had much contact with 'Dave Weller', other than phone calls. And the mobile he'd contacted them on, diming out Pulaski, was, of course, long gone. Batteries in one sewer, snapped-in-half handset in another.

  Sachs was handling a different portion of the case, tracking down the insiders who'd helped Logan escape, medical workers, an attendant in the New York City morgue and various prison guards. To Rhyme it seemed they'd taken an astronomical risk. If it was discovered that the Watchmaker was alive, then the ring of suspects would be quite small; they were sure to be detected. But, Rhyme supposed, it wasn't the Watchmaker's problem if they didn't hide the bribes he'd paid them or had failed to come up with credible alibis after they'd faked the medical reports and death certificate.

  You have to be smart to earn a few million bucks illegally.

  One or two had skipped town but it was only a matter of time until they were tracked down. Not a good idea to use your real credit card when you're on the lam. Natural selection applies to criminal activity, as well as to newts and simians.

  Rhyme was handling part of the investigation too, though not the evidentiary part, curiously. The criminalist had made some meticulous plans of his own.

  Probably nothing would come of them but he couldn't afford to pass up any opportunity.

  He now gazed out the window, examining the clime - overcast again, white and gray - and he wondered, Where are you? And what are you up to? Why did you break into the Met? And what part of that plot do you need me alive for?

  Thom appeared in the doorway. 'I talked to Rachel. Leave in an hour?'

  'That'll do,' Rhyme replied.

  The journey he was referring to would take them to the medical center. Lon Sellitto had regained consciousness. Even in his frail state, the detective re
mained true to his nature. Rachel reported that his reaction upon swimming into a waking state had been to look down at his belly and mutter, smiling, 'Fuck, I musta lost thirty pounds.'

  Only then had he inquired about the Unsub 11-5 case.

  But there were still many questions about his recovery. He had been, and would continue to be, treated with chelation drugs, which bind and deactivate toxins. Recovery is better with patients who've had chronic exposure, such as industrial workers (or victims of patiently homicidal spouses), but problematic with acute attacks, as in Sellitto's case. The jury was still out on the detective's long-term improvement. Nerve damage, liver and renal issues were possibilities.

  Maybe even permanent paralysis.

  Time would tell.

  Amelia Sachs walked into the parlor. 'Lon?' she asked.

  'Leave here in about an hour.'

  'Should we get flowers?' she asked.

  Rhyme muttered, 'I've arranged for flowers once this week. I'm not doing it again.'

  Just at that moment the lab phone rang. Sachs, in a position to view caller ID on a monitor, said quickly, 'Rhyme. I think it's going down.'

  He wheeled closer.

  'Ah.'

  Then punched accept call.

  'Yes?'

  'Mr Rhyme, it's Jason? Jason Heatherly?' The unnecessarily interrogative words were fast, the voice flummoxed. 'I'm--'

  'I remember you, Mr Heatherly.'

  How could Rhyme not? They'd spoken at length only a week ago.

  'Well, it's - I don't know how to explain this - but what you said might happen happened.'

  Rhyme and Sachs shared a smile.

  'It's gone. Impossible but it's gone. The alarms were set when I left last night. They were set when I got here this morning. Nothing was disturbed. Not a thing out of place. Not. A. Thing. But it's gone.'

  'Really.'

  The 'it' the worked-up jeweler was referring to was a watch. The Mikhail Semyonovitch Bronnikov timepiece made entirely of bone.

  Contrary to what he'd told the Watchmaker, Rhyme had not believed the man had any connection with the Bone Collector whatsoever. He'd told the Watchmaker that simply to dangle bait.