The Skin Collector (Lincoln Rhyme 11)

Her name was Anne Thomson and she was the owner of Femme Fatale Modification and Supplies. Mid-thirties, with short dark hair and only one tasteful nose piercing, she was really pretty. And part of that was the four-color tats, okay, artwork, on her chest and neck and arms. One - on the chest - was a combination of a snake and a bird. It vaguely reminded Sellitto of a picture he'd seen a few times on vacation in Mexico, some religious symbol. On her neck were some of the constellations, not only the stars but the animals they were inspired by. Crab, scorpion, bull. And when she turned once, he saw two sparkling red shoes on her shoulder. They looked real. Dorothy, my pretty ...

Fuck art, Linc. That's how I feel about art.

But not this. Sellitto liked the images. He really liked them. The pictures seemed to move, to expand and contract. Almost three-dimensional. How the hell did that work? It was as if he were looking at living paintings. Or at some entirely different creature, something not human but more than human. It took him back to some of the computer games his son had played a few years ago as a teenager. Sellitto remembered looking over the boy's shoulder. 'What's that?' Pointing at one of the creatures in the game. It looked like a snake with legs and sported a fish's tail and human head.

'You know, a nyrad.' Like, obviously.

Oh. Sure. Nyrad.

Sellitto now looked up and realized he'd been caught staring at the woman's chest.

'I--'

'It's okay. They're there to be looked at. Plural. Works, I mean. Not boobs.'

'I--'

'You just said that. I'm not thinking you're a dirty old man. And you're about to ask if they hurt.'

'Naw, I figure they hurt.'

'They did. But what in life doesn't, if it's important?'

Sex, dinner and collaring a prick of a criminal, Sellitto thought. Most of the time those didn't hurt. But he shrugged. 'What I was going to ask was, you draw them yourself? Design them, I mean.'

'No. I went to an artist in Boston. The best on the East Coast. I just wanted Quetzalcoatl. Mexican god.' Her finger touched the snake on her chest. 'And we talked for a couple of days and she got to know me. She did the plumed serpent and recommended the constellations. I got Dorothy's shoes too. She smiled. Sellitto smiled. 'I don't mean to be overly political, except I do. See, that's how women artists handle an inking. A man goes into a male artist and says I want a chain, a death's-head, a flag. And out he comes with a chain, a death's-head or a flag. Women take a different approach. Less impulsive, less instant, more thoughtful.'

Sellitto muttered, 'Kinda like life in general. Men and women, I mean.' The questions about Unsub 11-5 still needed to be answered. But he now asked, 'Hey, just curious, you know. How'd you get into this business?'

'You mean, aside from the skin art, I seem like a schoolteacher?'

'Yeah.'

'I was a schoolteacher.' Thomson let the pause linger. Timing. 'Middle school. Now, there's a DMZ for you. You know, a no-man's-land between the hormones to the south and the attitudes to the north.'

'I got a kid. A boy. He's outta college now. But he had to get to that age, you know.'

She nodded. 'It wasn't flying for me. I went to get a work at a parlor in town and, hard to explain, it set me free. I quit the school and opened a shop. Now I do skin art and canvas painting too. Shows in SoHo, uptown too. Couldn't've done it, though, if I hadn't gotten inked in the first place.'

'Impressive.'

'Thanks. Now you were asking about the American Eagle machine.'

Thomson's was the one shop in the Tri-State area that sold parts and needles for that model. She also had a used model for sale. To Sellitto it looked gnarly, dangerous. Like a ray gun from some weird science-fiction flick.

'Can I ask? Why're you interested?'

The detective debated. He decided he owed it to her to tell all. Maybe it was that she was so devoted to the art. Or that she had a really incredible chest. He told her what 11-5 was doing.

'No, my God, no.' Her eyes were as wide as the Mexican snakebird's were narrow. 'Somebody's actually doing that, killing people with a machine?' She shuddered and for a moment Thomson, for all her imposing creatures and Wizard of Oz shoes, didn't seem mysterious or more than human at all. She seemed vulnerable and small. TT Gordon had had the same reaction - a sense of betrayal that somebody in their close-knit profession would use his talent to kill and do so in a particularly horrific way.

'Afraid so.'

'The American Eagles,' she said. 'Old machines, not as reliable as the new ones. One of the first portables.'

'That's what TT said.'

Thomson nodded. 'He's a good guy. You're lucky he's helping you. And I think I can help you too. Nobody's ever bought a machine here but about a week ago a man came in and bought some needles for an American Eagle.' She leaned forward, resting her hands on the counter. The shiny black ring on her right index finger turned out to be ink.