The Skin Collector (Lincoln Rhyme 11)

Skin.

It was Billy's canvas too and he'd become as fixated on it as the Bone Collector had been on the skeletal system of the body - which Billy had found interesting reading in Serial Cities. He appreciated the Bone Collector's obsession but frankly he couldn't understand his fascination with bones. Skin was far and away the more revealing aspect of the human body. Far more central. More important.

What insights did bones give? Nothing. Not like skin.

Of the integumentary organs, which protect the body, skin is the most evolved, far more than hooves, nails, scales, feathers, and the clever, creepy arthropod exoskeletons. In mammals, skin is the largest organ. Even if organs and vessels might be maintained by some alternative Dr Seuss contraption, skin does so much more. It prevents infection and is an early warning system against and protection from excessive cold and heat, from disease or invasion, from ticks to teeth to clubs and, under certain circumstances, even spears and bullets. Skin retains that vitally precious substance, water. It absorbs the light we need and even manufactures vitamin D. How about that?

Skin.

Delicate or tough as, yes, leather. (Around the eyes it's only a half millimeter thick; on the soles of the feet, five millimeters.)

The epidermis is the top layer, the beige or black or brown sheath we can see, and the dermis, into which a tattoo machine's needles must penetrate, is below. Skin is a master at regeneration, which means that the most beautiful tattoo in the world will vanish if the needles don't go deep enough, which would be like painting the Mona Lisa on sand.

But these basic facts about skin, as interesting as they were to Billy Haven, didn't touch on its true value. Skin reveals, skin explains. Wrinkles report age and childbearing, calluses hint at vocation and hobby, color suggests health. And then there's pigmentation. A whole other story.

Now Billy Haven sat back and surveyed his work on the parchment of his victim's skin. Yes, good.

A Billy Mod ...

The watch on his right wrist hummed. Five seconds later the second watch, in his pocket, did so too. Sort of a snooze alarm, prescribed by the Modification Commandments.

And not a bad idea. Like most artists, Billy tended to get caught up in his work.

He rose and, with illumination provided by the halogen headlamp strapped to his forehead, walked around the dim space underneath Provence2.

This area was an octagonal chamber, about thirty feet across. Three arches led to three darkened tunnels. In a different century, Billy had learned in research, these corridors had been used to direct cattle to two different underground abattoirs here on the West Side of Manhattan.

Healthy cows were directed to one doorway, sickly to another. Both were slaughtered for meat but the tainted ones were sold locally to the poor in Hell's Kitchen or shipped down to Five Points or the city of Brooklyn, for the filthy markets there. The more robust cattle ended up in the kitchens of the Upper East-and Westsiders and the better restaurants in town.

Billy didn't know which of the exits was for the healthy beef, which for the sickly. He'd been down both until they ended, one in brick, one in rubble, but he couldn't deduce which was which. He wished he knew because he wanted to tattoo the young lady in the tainted beef corridor - it just seemed appropriate. But he'd decided to do his mod in the place where the livestock cull had been made: the octagon itself.

He looked her over carefully. The tattoo was good. The cicatrized border too. He was pleased. When he did a work for clients in his shop back home, Billy never worried about their reaction. He had his own standards. A job they seemed indifferent to might fill him with ecstasy. Or a girl could tearfully look over her wedding cake tattoo (yes, pretty popular) and cry at how beautiful it was but he'd see one flaw, a tiny stroke out of place, and Billy would be furious with himself for days.

This art was good, though. He was satisfied.

He wondered if they'd catch on to the message now. But, no, not even Lincoln Rhyme was that good.

Thinking about the difficulty he'd had earlier - at the hospital and the doctors' office building - he'd decided it was time to start slowing down those pursuing him.

One of the passages in the Commandments, written in Billy's flowing script, was this: 'Continually reassess the strengths of the officers investigating you. It may be necessary to throw up roadblocks to their investigation. Aim for the lower-level officers only; too senior, and the authorities will bring more effort to bear on finding you.'

Or, in Billy's terms: Thou shalt smite all those who are trying to mess with the Modification.

His idea for slowing them down was simple. People who've never been inked think that machines use a hollow needle. But that's not the case. Tattoo needles are solid, usually several soldered together, allowing the ink to run down the shaft and into the skin.

But Billy had some hypodermics, to sedate his victims. He now reached into his gear bag and withdrew a plastic medicine bottle with a locking cap. He opened the lid carefully and set the brown cylinder on the ground. He selected a surgeon's hemostat, long tweezers, from his stash of stolen medical equipment. With this instrument he reached into the plastic bottle and picked up the three-quarter-inch tip of a thirty-gauge hypodermic - one of the smallest diameters. He'd carefully fatigued this tip off the syringe and packed it with poison.

He now picked up the woman's purse and worked the dull end of the needle into the leather under the clasp so that when the crime scene cop opened the bag, the business end of the nearly microscopic needle would pierce the glove and the skin. The tip was so thin, it was unlikely that the person pricked would feel a thing.

Until, of course, about an hour later, when the symptoms hit them like a fireball. And those symptoms were delicious: Strychnine produces some of the most extreme and painful reactions of any toxin. You can count on nausea, convulsion of muscles, hypertension, grotesque flexing of the body, raw sensitivity and finally asphyxiation.

Strychnine, in effect, spasms you to death.

Though in this case, the dosage would, in an adult, lead to severe brain damage rather than death.

Visit pestilence upon your pursuers.

A moan from behind him.