Eyes, hands, livers, hearts, lungs, sexual organs, breasts, feet. Whole fetuses too. Billy noted that most of the samples dated to the early twentieth century. Maybe back then medical students used the real thing to learn anatomy, while today’s generation went for high def computer images.
Against the wall were shelves of bones, hundreds of them. He thought back to the infamous case Lincoln Rhyme had worked years ago, the Bone Collector crimes. Yet bones held little interest for Billy Haven.
The Rule of Bone?
No, didn’t resonate like the Rule of Skin. No comparison.
He now walked up and down the aisles, examining the jars, which ranged from a few inches to three feet in height. He paused and stared, eye-to-eye with a severed head. The features seemed of South Pacific heritage to Billy, or so he wanted to believe — because, to his delight, the head sported a tattoo: a cross just below where the hairline would have been.
Billy took this as a good sign. The word ‘tattoo’ comes from the Polynesian or Samoan tatau, the process of inking the lower male torso with an elaborate geometric design, called a pe’a (and a woman’s with a similar inking, called a malu). The process takes weeks and is extremely painful. Those who finish the inking get a special title and are respected for their courage. Those who don’t even try are called ‘naked’ in Samoan and marginalized. The worst stigma, though, was awarded to the men and women who started the procedure but didn’t finish it because they couldn’t stand the pain. The shame remained with them forever.
Billy liked the fact that they defined themselves according to their relationship to inking.
He decided to believe that the man he was staring at had endured getting his pe’a and had gone on to be a force in his tribe. Heathen though he might have been, he was brave, a good warrior (even if not clever enough to avoid having his head end up on a steel shelf in the New World).
Billy held the jar in one hand and leaned forward until he was only a few inches from the severed head, separated by thick glass and thin liquid.
He thought about one of his favorite books. The Island of Doctor Moreau. The H. G. Wells novel was about an Englishman shipwrecked on an island, on which the doctor of the title surgically combined humans and animals. Hyena-men, Leopard-men … Billy had read and reread the book the way other kids would read Harry Potter or Twilight.
Vivisection and recombination were the ultimate modding, of course. And Doctor Moreau was the perfect example of the application of the Rule of Skin.
All right. Time to get back to reality, he chided himself.
Billy now stepped to the door and looked up and down the corridor. Still deserted. He continued his way to the hospital and knew when he’d crossed into the building. The neutral scent of cleanser and mold from the office building was overrun by a mélange of smells. Sweet disinfectants, alcohol, Lysol, Betadine.
And the others, repulsive to some, but not to Billy: the aromas of skin in decay, skin melting under infection and bacteria, skin burning to ash … perhaps from lasers in operating rooms.
Or maybe hospital workers were disposing of discarded tissue and organs in an oven somewhere. He couldn’t think of this without recalling the Nazis, who had used the skin of Holocaust victims for practical purposes, like lamp shades and books. And who had devised a system of tattooing that was the simplest — and most significant — in history.
The Rule of Skin …
Billy inhaled deeply.
He sensed some other aroma: extremely offensive. What, what?
Oh, he understood. With so many foreign workers in the medical fields, the foods the hospital prepared included those aromatic with curry and garlic.
Disgusting.
Billy finally entered the heart of the hospital, the third sub-basement. It was completely deserted here. A perfect place to bring a victim for some deadly modding, he reflected.
The elevator would have surveillance cameras so he found the stairwell, entered it and started to climb. At the next sub-basement, number two, he paused and peeked out. It was the morgue, presently unstaffed. Apparently the medicos had not managed to kill anyone yet today.
Up another flight to the basement level, a floor with patient rooms. Peering out through the fire door’s greasy glass, crosshatched with fine metal mesh, he could see a flash of color, then motion: a woman walking down the corridor, her back to him.
Ah, he thought, noting that while her skirt and jacket were navy blue, the scarf around her neck was red-and-white shimmery silk. It stood out like a flag in the drab setting. She was alone. He eased through the door and followed. He noted her muscular legs — revealed clearly by the knee-length skirt — noted the slim waist, noted the hips. The hair, in a tight bun, was brown with a bit of gray. Although the sheer pantyhose revealed a few purplish veins near the ankle, her skin was superb for an older woman’s.
Billy found himself aroused, heart pounding, the blood throbbing in his temples. And elsewhere.
Blood. The Oleander Room … blood on the carpet, blood on the floor.
Put those thoughts away. Now! Think of Lovely Girl.
He did and the urges dimmed. But dimming isn’t vanishing.
Sometimes you just gave in. Whatever the consequences might be.
Oleander …
He moved more quickly now, coming up behind her.
Thirty feet away, twenty-five …
Billy closed the distance to about fifteen feet, ten, three, his eyes staring at her legs. It was then that he heard a woman’s no-nonsense voice behind him.
‘You, in the cap. Police! Drop the backpack. Put your hands on your head!’
CHAPTER 20
About thirty feet away from the man, Amelia Sachs steadied her Glock and repeated, more harshly, ‘Backpack on the ground. Hands on your head! Now!’
The woman he’d been about to assault, only a few feet from him, turned. The confusion in her face became horror as she stared at her would-be assailant and understood what was happening. ‘No, please, no!’
The attacker was in a jacket, not the longer thigh-length coat that the witness reported their unsub wore, but he had the same telltale stocking cap and black backpack. If she was wrong, she’d apologize. ‘Now!’ Sachs called again.
With his back to her still, he slowly lifted his hands. As his sleeve rode up she got a glimpse of a red tattoo of some kind on his left arm, starting at the back of his hand and disappearing under his coat. A snake, a dragon?
He was raising his hands, yes, but not dropping the backpack.
Shit. He’s going to rabbit.
And, sure enough, in an instant, he tugged his hat down into a ski mask and leapt forward, grabbing the woman, spinning her around. He got his arm around her neck. She cried out and struggled. Her dark eyes were wide with fear.
Okay. He’s Unsub 11-5.
Sachs eased forward slowly, the blade sights of the Glock searching for a clear target.
Couldn’t find one. Thanks largely to the panicked hostage, who was struggling to get away, kicking and twisting. He pressed his face close to her ear, apparently whispered something and, with wide eyes, she stopped struggling.
‘I have a gun!’ he shouted. ‘I’ll kill her. Drop your gun. Now.’
Sachs called back, ‘No.’