Characterizing the attack in this way was rather clever, Rhyme decided. It would take suspicion off the AFFC and would galvanize sentiment against the council’s enemies. It would also cause immeasurable damage to the Sodom of New York City, bastion of globalization, mixed races and liberalism.
Rhyme suspected there was more at work as well. ‘Power play within the militia movement? If word gets around that AFFC pulled this off, their stock would rise through the roof.’
A call came in from the federal building in Manhattan.
‘The Stantons are not doin’ the talkie-talkie, Lincoln,’ said Fred Dellray, the FBI agent who was running the federal side of the attempted attack. The couple and their son were now in federal custody but apparently not — to translate Dellray’s distinctive lingo — cooperating at all.
‘Well, sweat ’em or something, Fred. I want to know who the hell our unsub was. Prints came back negative and he wasn’t in CODIS.’
‘I saw those pictures of your boy in the tunnel, after the run-in with the H two Oh. My, my, that was a Breaking Bad moment, no? How fast they think that water was going?’
He was on speaker and, from a nearby evidence table, Sachs called, ‘They don’t know, Fred, but after it cut him in half it also cut through a concrete wall and a steam pipe on the other side. I had to haul ass out of there ’fore I got scalded.’
‘You catch anything helpful in the tunnel?’
‘Got a few things, not much. It was pretty much toast. Well, more oatmeal than toast, what with the steam and water.’
She explained about the letter, intended to start a race riot.
The agent sighed. ‘Just when you think the world’s a-changin’ …’
‘We’ll work up the evidence, Fred, and be in touch.’
‘Thanks mightily.’
They disconnected and Sachs returned to helping Mel Cooper analyze the trace and isolate and run the friction ridges from the Stantons’ hotel suite. Regarding the prints, though, only one set was on file, though they knew the perpetrator’s identity already: Joshua Stanton had a prior in Clayton County for assaulting a gay man. Hate crime.
Rhyme glanced up at the crime scene pictures, immune to the gruesome images. He looked once more at the stark tattoo, the centipede in red on the left arm. The eyes eerily human. It was, as Sachs had told him, very well done. Had he inked it himself? Rhyme wondered. Or was it painted by a friend? The unsub probably. Point of pride.
Sachs took a phone call.
‘No, no,’ she whispered, drawing the attention of everybody in the room. Her face revealed dismay.
What now? Rhyme wondered, frowning.
She disconnected. Looked at them all.
‘Lon’s taken a turn for the worse. He went into cardiac arrest. They’ve revived him but it’s not looking good. I should be with Rachel.’
‘You go on, Sachs. We’ll take care of this.’ Rhyme hesitated. Then asked: ‘You want to give Pam a call and see if she wants to go with you? She always liked Lon.’
Pulling her coat off the hook, Sachs debated. Finally she said, ‘Naw. Frankly, I don’t think I could handle any more rejection.’
CHAPTER 71
Apparently, though, Billy wasn’t going to kill her.
Not yet, at any rate.
It was ink, not poison, he’d loaded into the tattoo gun.
‘Stop fidgeting,’ he instructed. He was on his knees in front of the couch she lay on.
Pam said, ‘My hands hurt behind me. Please. Undo the tape. Please.’
‘No.’
‘Just tape them in front of me.’
‘No. Stay still.’ He glared and she stopped squirming.
‘What the fuck are—’
Another fierce slap. ‘We have an image to maintain. Do you understand me? You will never use the F word and you will never take that tone!’ He gripped her hair and shook her head like prey in a fox’s mouth. ‘From now on your role is to be my woman. Our people will see you by my side. The loyal wife.’
He returned to the inking.
Pam thought of screaming but she was sure he’d beat the crap out of her if she tried. Besides, there was no one else in the building. One unit was empty and the other tenants were on a cruise.
He was speaking to her absently. ‘We’ll have to go deep underground for a while. My aunt and uncle won’t give me up. But my cousin, Joshua? It’s just a matter of time until he gets tricked into telling them everything he knows. Me included. We can’t go back to Southern Illinois. Your friend Lincoln will have the FBI picking up all the senior people at the AFFC now. And he’ll suspect the Larchwood crowd again, so Missouri’s out. We’ll have to go someplace else. Maybe the Patriot Assembly in upstate New York. They’re pretty much off the grid.’ He turned to her. ‘Or Texas. There’re people there who remember my parents as martyred freedom fighters. We could live with them.’
‘But, Seth—’
‘We’ll lie low for a few years. Call me “Seth” again and I’ll hurt you. I can do tattooing work for cash. You can teach Sunday school. Little by little we can reemerge. New identities. The AFFC’s over now, but maybe it’s just as well — we’ll move on. Start a new movement. And do a hell of a better job. We’ll do it the right way. We’ll place our women into schools — and I don’t just mean church schools. I mean public and private. Get the kids young. Break them in. We men will run for office, low level, cities and counties — at first. We’ll start local and then move up. Oh, it’s going to be a whole new world. You don’t think that way now. But you’ll be proud to be part of it.’
He lifted the machine off her leg, looked over the work and returned to inking her.
‘My uncle was backward in a lot of ways. But he had one moment of genius. He came up with the Rule of Skin. He’d lecture about it all over the country — at other militias, at revival meetings, at churches, at hunting camps.’ Billy’s eyes shone. ‘The Rule of Skin … It’s brilliant. Think about it: Skin tells us about our physical health, right? It’s flushed or pale. Glowing or dull. Shrunken or swollen. Broken out or clear … And it tells us our spiritual development too. And intellectual. And emotional. White is good and smart and noble. Black and brown and yellow are subversive and dangerous.’
‘You can’t be serious!’
He made a fist and Pam cringed and fell silent.
‘You want proof. The other day I was in the Bronx and this guy stopped me. A young man, I don’t know. About your age. Black. He had keloids on his face — scars, like tattoos. They were beautiful. A real artist had done them.’ His eyes looked off slightly. ‘And you know why he stopped me? To sell me drugs. That’s the truth about people like that. The Rule of Skin. You can’t fool it.’
Pam laughed bitterly. ‘A black kid tried to sell you drugs in the Bronx? Guess what? Go to West Virginia and a white kid’ll try to sell you drugs.’
Billy wasn’t listening. ‘There’s been an argument about Hitler: whether he genuinely hated Jews and Gypsies and gays and wanted to make the world a better place by eliminating them. Or whether he didn’t actually care but thought that German citizens hated them, so he used that hate and fear to seize power.’
‘You’re holding up Hitler as a role model?’