The Skin Collector (Lincoln Rhyme 11)

But instead she glanced subtly at her phone's screen, pocketed the unit and said, eyes out the window, 'Could be, Rhyme. Could be.'

III

THE RED CENTIPEDE

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7

9:00 A.M.

CHAPTER 32

Sweating, groaning loudly, Billy Haven awoke from a difficult dream.

Involving the Oleander Room.

Though all dreams set there - and there were lots of them - were, by definition, difficult.

This one was particularly horrifying because his parents were present, even though they'd died some years before he'd ever stepped into the Oleander Room for the first time. Maybe they were ghosts but they looked real. The odd reality of the unreality of dreams.

His mother was gazing at what he was doing and she was screaming, 'No, no, no! Stop, stop!'

But Billy was smiling reassuringly and saying, 'It's okay,' even though he knew it wasn't. It was anything but okay. Then he realized the reassurance didn't mean anything because his mother couldn't hear him. Which wiped the smile away and he felt miserable.

His father merely shook his head, disappointed at what he was seeing. Vastly disappointed. This upset Billy too.

But their part in the dream made sense, now that he thought about it: His parents had died and died bloody.

Perfectly, horrifically logical.

Billy was smelling blood, seeing blood, tasting blood. Inking his skin temporarily with blood. Which happened both in the dream and in real life in the Oleander Room. Painting his skin the way people in some cultures do when piercing is forbidden.

Billy flung off the sheet and sat up, swinging his feet to the cold floor. Using a pillow, he wiped his forehead of sweat, picturing all of them: Lovely Girl and his parents.

He glanced down at the works on his thighs. On the left:

ELA

On the other:

LIAM

Two names that he was proud to carry with him. That he'd carry forever. They represented a huge gap in his life. But a gap soon to be closed. A wrong soon to be righted.

The Modification ...

He looked at the rest of his body.

Billy Haven was largely tat-free, which was odd for someone who made much of his income as a tattoo artist. Most inkers were drawn to the profession because they enjoyed body mods, were even obsessed with the needles, the lure of the machine. More. Give me more. And they'd often grow depressed at the dwindling inches of uninked skin on their bodies to fill with more works.

But not Billy. Maybe it was like Michelangelo. The master had liked painting but did not particularly like being painted.

Finger skin to finger skin ...

The truth was that Billy hadn't wanted to be a tat artist at all. It had been a temporary job to put himself through college. But he'd found that he enjoyed the practice and in an area where a pen-and-paintbrush artist would have trouble making a living, a skin artist could do okay for himself. So he'd tucked aside his somewhat worthless college degree, set up shop in a strip mall and proceeded to make pretty good ducats with his Billy Mods.

He looked again at his thighs.

ELA LIAM