The Skin Collector(Lincoln Rhyme)

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 McGuinn – Pam’s boyfriend. The other, under the pseudonym Frank Samuels, was near Chinatown, off Canal Street. Crime Scene had searched both. Billy had largely scrubbed them but in the second place – a workshop – the teams had recovered equipment and a number of terrariums filled with the plants from which Billy had extracted and distilled the poisons he’d used in the murders.

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.

The criminalist finished logging the plants into evidence – noting the hemlock was particularly lovely – and rang up Fred Dellray, the FBI agent, who would be handling the federal side of the investigation. He explained what they’d found. The eccentric agent muttered, ‘If that don’t beat all. I wondered where Hussein’s WMDs got themselves to. And we finally found ’em about two blocks from my favorite Chinese restaurant. Happy Panda. The one on Canal. No, not the Happy Panda on Mott or the Happy Panda on Sixth. The original one and only Happy Panda. Yu-um. The jellyfish. No, no, ’s better’n you think. Okay, call me when you got the report ready to go.’

After he disconnected, Rhyme heard a laugh across the room.

‘That’s pretty good,’ Mel Cooper said, staring at a computer screen.

‘What?’ Rhyme asked.

Pulaski laughed too and turned the screen: It was the New York Post online edition. A headline over the story about the Stantons was Poison Pen.

Referring to Billy Haven’s murder weapon.

Clever.

As Cooper and Pulaski continued to analyze and catalog the evidence from both Pam’s apartment and Billy’s workshop and safe house, Rhyme motored back to the evidence table. ‘Glove,’ he called.

‘You want—?’ Thom asked.

‘Glove! I’m about to fondle some evidence.’


With some difficulty the aide slipped one onto Rhyme’s right hand.

‘Now. That.’ He pointed to the slim notebook titled The Modification, which contained pages of details on the poison plot: timing, victims to choose, locations, police procedures, quotations from Serial Cities, the true crime book about Rhyme and directions on how to ‘anticipate the anticipator’. The notes were written in Billy’s handsome cursive. Not surprisingly, given his artistic skill, the handwriting resembled that in an illuminated manuscript inked by scribes.

Rhyme had skimmed the booklet earlier but now he wanted to examine it in depth to search for other conspirators.

Thom arranged it on the arm of his wheelchair and, in a gesture at times awkward, at times elegant, but ever confident, Lincoln Rhyme turned pages and read.