The Skin Collector (Lincoln Rhyme 11)

'TOD was about an hour ago. Ninety minutes maybe.'

Rhyme was confused. 'You couldn't get the tox screen back in that time.'

'Naw, the ME said a couple hours.'

'Then how'd they'd know she was poisoned?'

'Oh, one of the medics ran a tox case a couple years ago. He said you could tell from the rictus on the face and the posture. The pain, you know. It's one hell of a way to die. We gotta get this son of a bitch, Linc.'

CHAPTER 5

Great. Just great.

Standing in the basement of the SoHo boutique where Chloe Moore had been abducted, Amelia Sachs grimaced, leaning down and peering into the utility room. She was staring at the narrow tunnel that led from that room to the crime scene itself, apparently a larger tunnel, where Chloe had been killed.

The body was just visible and brightly lit by lamps the first responders had set up.

Palms sweating, Sachs continued to peer through the tiny shaft she'd have to crawl through.

Just great.

She stepped back into the cellar and inhaled two or three times, sucking moldy, fuel-oil-scented air deep into her lungs. Years ago, Lincoln Rhyme had created a database of layouts of underground areas in New York, assembled from the Department of Buildings and other city government agencies. She'd downloaded one through a secure app on her iPhone and - with dismay - reviewed the layout before her.

Where did phobias come from? Sachs wondered. Some childhood trauma, some genetic imprinting th

at discourages us from petting poisonous snakes or cavorting on mountain ledges?

Serpents and heights weren't her problem; claustrophobia was. If she believed in former lives, which she didn't, Sachs could imagine that she, in an earlier incarnation, had been buried alive. Or, if you followed the logic of karma, more likely she'd been a vindictive queen who'd slowly interred her rivals as they begged for mercy.

Sachs, close to six feet tall, looked at the chart of her nemesis: the twenty-eight- or thirty-inch-diameter tunnel from the utility room to the bigger transport tunnel, the site of the killing. The narrow passage was, according to the chart, twenty-three feet long.

It's a round coffin, she thought.

The site of the killing was also accessible through a manhole thirty feet or so from where the body lay. That was probably his entrance to the kill site but Sachs knew she would have to wriggle through the smaller tunnel, collecting trace as she went, since that's where he'd crawled to get to the basement of the boutique - and through which he'd dragged Chloe before murdering her.

'Sachs?' Rhyme's voice crackled through the headset. She jumped and cranked down the volume. 'Where are you? I can't see anything.' The com device Sachs wore featured not only a microphone and earpiece but also a high-def video camera. She'd just donned the unit and hadn't activated the visual yet.

She touched a button on the surprisingly small camera - about the size of a double-A battery - and heard, 'Okay.' Then a grumbled 'It's still pretty dark.'

'Because it is dark. I'm in a basement - and about to climb into a tunnel the size of a breadbasket.'

'I've never actually seen a breadbasket,' he replied. 'I'm not sure they exist.' Rhyme was always in good humor when approaching a new crime scene. 'Well, let's get going. Scan around. Let's see what we've got.'

She often wore this equipment when she searched a scene. Rhyme would offer suggestions - many fewer now than when they began working together and she was a novice. He also liked to keep an eye out for her safety, though he never admitted that. Rhyme insisted that officers search a scene solo - too much distraction otherwise. The best forensic experts bonded with the scene psychologically. They became the victim, became the perp - and accordingly located evidence they might have missed. That connection didn't happen, or it didn't happen as easily, when somebody else searched with you. But being alone was a risk. It was surprising how many times a scene turned hot: The perp returned, or remained, and attacked the officer walking the grid. It even happened that, though the perp was long gone, another, unrelated attack might occur. Sachs had once been assaulted by a homeless man, a schizophrenic who thought she'd come to steal his imaginary dog.

She looked into the utility room once more, to give Rhyme a view, and then gazed through the tunnel of hell briefly.

'Ah,' he said, now understanding her concern. 'Breadbasket.'

Sachs made the final adjustments to her outfit. She was dressed in a white Tyvek jumpsuit, hood and booties. Because poison had been the apparent weapon, she wore an N95 respirator. The toxin had been injected, the first responders reported, via the tattoo gun, and there seemed to be no airborne chemicals to worry about that they'd noted. Still, why take the chance?

Footsteps behind her, someone approaching through the moldy, damp basement of Chez Nord.

She glanced back at an attractive crime scene officer who'd be helping process the boutique. Sachs had known Jean Eagleston for years; she was one of the stars of the CS oper-ation. Eagleston had been interviewing the store manager, who'd found the body. Sachs had wanted to know if the manager had entered the scene itself - where Chloe's body lay - to check on her employee.

But Eagleston said, 'No. She noticed the door was open and looked into the utility room, saw the vic lying there. That was enough for her. She didn't go any farther.'

Can't blame the manager, Sachs reflected. Even if one wasn't claustrophobic, who'd go into a deserted tunnel with an apparent murder victim lying on the ground and, possibly, the killer still there?