Pam detached herself from Seth’s arm, kissed Rhyme on the cheek and hugged Thom. Seth shook everyone’s hand.
TT Gordon asked if they needed any more help with the case. Sellitto glanced around the room at the others and when Rhyme shook his head, said, ‘Thanks for coming in. Appreciate it.’
‘I’ll keep an eye out for anything weird. In the community, you know what I mean? So long, dudes.’
Gordon stashed his gear, pulled on his pitifully thin jacket and headed out the door.
Seth and Pam shared a smile, looking after Gordon’s exit.
Sachs said, ‘Hey, Pam. I think Seth needs a ’stache.’
The clean-cut young man nodded, frowning. ‘Hell, I can outdo him. I’d go with braids.’
Pam said, ‘Naw, get pierced. That way we can swap earrings.’
Seth said he had to be going; a deadline for his ad agency loomed. He kissed Pam, chastely, as if Rhyme and Sachs were the girl’s real parents. Then he nodded a farewell to the others. At the archway he turned and reminded Sachs and Rhyme that his parents would like to have lunch or dinner with them soon. Rhyme generally disliked such socializing but since Pam was, in effect, family, he’d agreed to go. And reminded himself to endure the pleasantries and mundane conversation with a smile.
‘Next week?’ Rhyme asked.
‘Perfect. Dad’s back from Hong Kong.’ He added that his father had found a copy of Rhyme’s book about New York crime scenes. ‘Any chance of an autograph?’
Recent surgery had improved Rhyme’s muscle control to the point that he actually could write his name — not as clearly as before the accident but as good as any doctor writing a prescription. ‘Delighted to.’
When he’d left, Pam pulled off her jacket and hat, set them on a chair, asked Sachs, ‘So, your message? What’s up?’
The detective nodded toward the sitting room, across the hall from Rhyme’s lab/parlor, and said, ‘How ’bout we go in there.’
CHAPTER 15
‘Now,’ Sachs said, ‘listen. I don’t think there’s anything to worry about.’
In her charming lilt of an alto voice Pam said, ‘Okay, there’s a way to start a conversation.’ She tossed her hair, which she wore like Sachs’s, beyond shoulder length, no bangs.
Sachs smiled. ‘No, really.’ She was looking the girl over closely and decided that she had a glow about her. Maybe it was her job, ‘costuming’, Pam called it, for a theater production company. She loved behind the scenes Broadway. College too she enjoyed.
But, no, Sachs asked herself: What’m I thinking? Of course. The answer was Seth.
Thom appeared in the doorway with a tray. Hot chocolate. The smell was both bitter and sweet. ‘Don’t you just love the winter?’ he asked. ‘When the temperature’s below thirty-five hot chocolate doesn’t have any calories. Lincoln could come up with the chemical formula for that.’
They thanked the aide. He then asked Pam, ‘When’s the premiere?’
Pam was attending NYU but she had a light class load this semester and — as a talented seamstress — was working part-time as an assistant to the assistant costumer for a Broadway revival of Sweeney Todd — the musical adaptation, by Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler, of an older play detailing the life of the homicidal barber in London. Todd would slice his customers’ throats and a conspirator would bake the victims into pies. Rhyme had reported to Sachs and Pam that the perp reminded him of a criminal he’d once pursued, though he added that Todd was purely fictional. Pam had seemed playfully disappointed at that factoid.
Cutting throats, cannibalism, Sachs reflected. Talk about body modification.
‘We open in a week,’ Pam said. ‘And I’ll have tickets for everybody. Even Lincoln.’
Thom said, ‘He’s actually looking forward to going.’
Sachs said, ‘No!’
‘Gospel.’
‘Heart be still.’
Pam said, ‘I’ve got a disabled slot reserved. And you know the theater has a bar.’
Sachs laughed. ‘He’ll be there for sure.’
Thom left, closing the door behind him, and Sachs continued, ‘So, here’s what’s happened. The man who kidnapped you and your mother? Years ago?’
‘Oh, yeah. The Bone Collector?’
Sachs nodded. ‘It looks like there’s somebody who’s copying him. In a way. He’s not obsessed with bones, though. But skin.’
‘God. What does he …? I mean, does he skin people?’
‘No, he killed his victim by tattooing her with poison.’
Pam closed her eyes and shivered. ‘Sick. Oh, wait. That guy on the news. He killed the girl in SoHo?’
‘Right. Now, there’s no evidence he has any interest in the surviving victims from back then. He’s using the tattoos to send a message, so he’ll pick targets in out-of-the-way places, we think — if we don’t stop him first. We checked but none of the other survivors of the Bone Collector are in the area. You’re the only one. Now, has anybody asked you anything about being kidnapped, about what happened?’
‘No, nobody.’
‘Well, we’re ninety-nine percent sure he has no interest in you at all. The killer—’
‘The unsub,’ Pam said, offering a knowing smile.
‘The unsub won’t know about you — your name wasn’t in the press because you were so young. And your mother used a pseudonym back then anyway. But I wanted you to know. Keep an eye out. And at night we’re going to have an officer parked outside your apartment.’
‘Okay.’ Pam didn’t seem fazed by this information. In fact, Sachs now realized something: The news that there might be a connection, however tenuous, with Unsub 11-5 whom the press had dubbed the Underground Man, was greeted with what seemed to Sachs to be such lack of concern that she realized the girl had another topic in mind.
And it was soon placed — no, dumped — on the table.
Pam sipped some cocoa and her eyes looked everywhere but at Sachs’s. ‘So, here’s the thing, Amelia. Something I wanted to talk about with you.’ Smiling. Smiling too much. Sachs grew nervous. She too took a sip. Didn’t taste a bit of the rich brew. She thought immediately: Pregnant?
Of course. That was it.
Sachs stifled her anger. Why hadn’t they been careful? Why—?
‘I’m not going to have a baby. Relax.’
Sachs did. Coughed a brief laugh. She wondered if her body language was that readable.
‘But Seth and me? We’re moving in together.’
This soon? Still, Sachs kept the smile on her face. Was it just as fake as the teenager’s?
‘Are you now? Well. That’s exciting news.’
Pam laughed, apparently at the disconnect between the modifier and Sachs’s less-than-excited expression. ‘Look, Amelia. We’re not getting married. Just, it’s time for this to happen. I feel it. He feels it. It’s just right. We’re like totally compatible. He knows me, really knows me. There’re times I don’t even have to say anything and he knows what I’m thinking. And he’s just so nice, you know?’
‘It’s kind of fast, don’t you think, honey?’
Pam’s enthusiasm, the sparkle, dimmed. Sachs recalled that her mother, who’d beaten the girl and locked her in a closet for hours on end, had called her ‘honey’, and Pam had grown to hate the endearment. Sachs regretted using it but she’d been flustered and forgotten the word was tainted.
She tried again. ‘Pam, he’s a great guy. Lincoln and I both think so.’
This was true.
But Sachs couldn’t stop herself. ‘It’s just, I mean, don’t you really think it’d be better to wait? What’s the hurry? Just hang out, date. Spend the night … Go away on a trip.’