Billy had worried about getting the book out of the library — he couldn’t check it out, of course. And there’d been security cameras near the photocopiers. In the end he’d decided to slice out the chapter he wanted with a razor blade. He’d cut deep and carefully before hiding the book away so no one else could find it. He knew that the book itself probably contained a chip in the spine that would have set off the alarm at the front doors if he’d tried to walk out with the entire thing. Still, he’d flipped through all the pages he’d stolen, one by one, to search for a second chip. There’d been none and he’d walked out of the library without a blare of alarms.
Now he was eager to study the pages in depth, to help with the rest of the plans for the Modification. But as he spread them out before him, he frowned. What was this? The first page was damaged, the corner torn off. But he was sure that he’d extracted all of them intact from the spine without any tearing. Then he glanced at his shirt breast pocket and noted it too was torn. He remembered that Chloe’d ripped his coveralls when she’d fought back. That’s what had happened. She’d torn both the clothing and the page.
But the damage wasn’t too bad though and only a small portion was missing. He now read carefully. Once, twice. The third time he took notes and tucked them into the Commandments.
Helpful. Good. Real helpful.
Setting the pages aside, he answered some texts, received some. Staying in touch with the outside world.
Now it was cleaning time.
No one appreciates germs, bacteria and viruses more than a skin artist. Billy wasn’t the least concerned about infecting his victims — that was, really, the whole point of the Modification — but he was very concerned about infecting himself, with whatever tainted the blood of his clients and, in particular, with the wonderful substances he was using in place of ink.
He walked to the sink and unzipped his backpack. Pulling on thick gloves, he took the American Eagle tattoo machine to the sink and dismantled it. He drained the tubes of liquid and washed them in two separate gallon buckets of water, rinsing them several times and drying them with a Conair. The water he poured into a hole he’d cut in the floor, letting it soak into the earth beneath the building. He didn’t want to flush or pour the water down the drain. That little matter of evidence, once again.
This bath was just the start, however. He cleaned each piece of the machine with alcohol (which sanitizes only; it doesn’t sterilize). He placed the parts in an ultrasonic bath of disinfectants. After that he sealed them in bags and popped them into the autoclave — a sterilization oven. Normally needles are disposed of but these were very special ones and hard to come by. He autoclaved these too.
Of course, only part of this was sanitizing to protect himself from poisons and infection. There was a second reason as welclass="underline" What better way to sever any link between you and your victims than to burn it away at 130 degrees Celsius?
Might even make hash of your ‘dust’ theory, don’t you think, Monsieur Locard?
CHAPTER 8
Lincoln Rhyme was waiting impatiently.
He asked Thom, ‘And Amelia?’
The aide hung up the landline. ‘I can’t get through.’
‘Goddamn it. What do you mean you can’t get through? Which hospital?’
‘Manhattan General.’
‘Call them again.’
‘I just did. I can’t get through to the main line. There’re some problems.’
‘That’s ridiculous. It’s a hospital. Call nine one one.’
‘You can’t call emergency to find out the status of a patient.’
‘I’ll call.’
But just then the front door buzzer sounded. Rhyme bluntly ordered Thom to ‘answer the damn bell’ and a moment later he heard footsteps in the front hall.
Two crime scene officers, the ones who’d assisted Sachs at the Chez Nord boutique homicide, entered the parlor, carrying large milk crates, filled with evidence bags — both plastic and paper. Rhyme knew the woman, Detective Jean Eagleston, who nodded a greeting, which he acknowledged a nod. The other officer, a large body-build of a cop, said, ‘Captain Rhyme, an honor to work with you.’
‘Decommissioned,’ Rhyme muttered. He was noting that weather must have been worse — the officers’ jackets were dusted with ice and snow. He noted that they’d wrapped the evidence cartons in cellophane. Good.
‘How is Amelia?’ asked Eagleston.
‘We don’t know anything yet,’ Rhyme muttered.
‘Anything else we can do,’ said her burly male partner, ‘just give us a call. Where do you want them?’ A nod at the crates.
‘Give them to Mel.’
Rhyme was referring to the latest member of the team, who’d just arrived.
Slim and with a retiring demeanor, NYPD Detective Mel Cooper was a renowned forensic lab man. Rhyme would bully anybody, all the way up to and including the mayor, to get Cooper assigned to him, especially for a case like this, in which toxin seemed to be the murder weapon of choice. With degrees in math, physics and organic chemistry, Cooper was perfect for the investigation.
The CS tech cop nodded greetings to Eagleston and her partner, who like him were based in the massive NYPD crime scene oper-ation in Queens. Despite the ornery weather and a chill in the parlor, Cooper wore a short-sleeved white shirt along with baggy black slacks, giving him the appearance of a crusading Mormon elder or high school science professor. His shoes were Hush Puppies. People usually weren’t surprised to learn that he lived with his mother; the astonishment came when they met his towering and beautiful Scandinavian girlfriend, a professor at Columbia. The two were champion ballroom dancers.
Cooper, in a lab coat, latex gloves, goggles and mask, gestured to an empty evidence examination table. His colleagues set the cartons on it and nodded goodbye, then went out once more into the storm.
‘You too, rookie. Let’s see what we’ve got.’
Ron Pulaski pulled on similar protective gear and stepped up to the table to help.
‘Careful,’ Rhyme said unnecessarily, since Pulaski had done this a hundred times and no one was more careful than he with evidence.
But the criminalist was distracted; his thoughts returned to Amelia Sachs. Why wasn’t she calling? He remembered seeing the powder pour into the video camera lens at the same time it hit her face. Remembered her choking.
And then: a key in the door.
A moment later. Wind. A cough. A throat clearing.
‘Well?’ Rhyme called.
Amelia Sachs turned the corner of the parlor, pulling her jacket off. A pause. More coughing.
‘Well?’ he repeated. ‘Are you all right?’
Her response was to guzzle a bottle of water that Thom handed to her.
‘Thanks,’ she said to the young man. Then to Rhyme: ‘Fine,’ her low sultry voice lower and sultrier than normal. ‘More or less.’
Rhyme had known that she hadn’t been poisoned. He’d spoken to the EMT who specialized in toxins as she’d been shepherded to Manhattan General Medical Center. Her symptoms were atypical for poisoning, the med tech had reported, and by the time the ambulance got to Emergency, her only symptoms were a racking cough and teary eyes, which had been flushed several times with water. The unsub had created a less-than-lethal trap — but the irritant might have blinded her or played havoc with the lungs.
‘What was it, Sachs?’
She now explained that swabs of mucous membranes and a lightning-fast blood workup had revealed that the ‘poison’ was dust composed mostly of ferric oxide.