'He'd spent time there before. I think that's where he was going to take Harriet Stanton to tattoo her.'
'Why?'
'It was like a skin museum.' She described the preserved tissue samples in jars.
'Skin. Sure. His obsession.'
'Exactly. Internal organs, brains. But easily half the jars contained external flesh.'
'You working up some kind of dark psychology here, Sachs? I'm not sure that's helpful. We know he's interested in skin.'
'I'm just figuring he'd spent more time there than just checking it out as a possible murder site. Like a tourist at MoMA, you know. It drew him. So I walked the grid three times there.'
'Now, that's a valid use for psychobabble,' Rhyme said.
CHAPTER 25
Head down, Billy strode quickly toward the subway in the Bronx that would take him south to Manhattan, to his workshop, to his terrariums, to safety and comfort.
He reflected back to the hospital corridor, picturing Amelia Sachs ... He couldn't help but think of her with some familiarity, having learned everything he could about the woman - and Lincoln Rhyme.
How had she found him? Well, that wasn't quite the question. How had Rhyme found him? She was good, sure. But Rhyme was better.
Okay, how? How exactly?
Well, he'd been to the hospital earlier. Maybe he'd picked up some trace there and, despite his diligence, had unwittingly deposited a bit near Chloe Moore's body.
Were the police thinking they'd avert another attack by sending Amelia Sachs to stop him?
But, no, Billy decided, they couldn't predict that he'd return when he had. The policewoman had come to the hospital just to ask if any staffers had seen a man fitting his description.
His thoughts strayed to Amelia Sachs ... She reminded him in some ways of Lovely Girl, her beautiful face, her hair, her keen and determined eyes. Some women, he knew, you had to control by reasoning with them, some by dominating. Others you couldn't control, and that was a problem.
Picturing her pale skin.
The Oleander Room ...
He imagined Amelia there, lying on the couch, the settee, the love seat, the lounger.
Breath growing faster, he pictured blood on her skin, he tasted blood on her skin. He smelled blood.
But forget that now.
Another word came to mind: anticipate.
If Rhyme had figured out about the hospital, he might have figured out Billy would come this way to escape. So he picked up his pace. It was a busy street. Discount shops, diners, and mobile phone and calling card stores. The clientele, working class. Payroll Advances. Best Rates in Town.
And people everywhere: parents with little kids, bundled up like sock puppets against the cutting chill and endless sleet. Teenagers ignoring the cold or genuinely not feeling it. Thin jackets, jeans, short skirts and fake fur collars on loud jackets. High heels, no stockings. Constant motion. Billy dodged a skateboarder a moment before collision.
He wanted to grab the kid, fling him off the board. But he was past in a flash. Besides, Billy wouldn't have made a scene. Bad idea, under the circumstances.
Back to his eastward escape. He noted here too a lot of skin art - Billy's preferred term for tats. Here, lower class, mixed race, he noticed a lot of writing on skin. In script primarily. Bible passages maybe or poems or manifestos. Martin Luther King, Jr., was represented, Billy speculated. But the lines might have been from Shaq or the Koran. Some writings were prominent - seventy-two-point type. Most, though, were so tiny you needed a magnifier to read them.
Crosses in all designs - inked on men who looked like gangbangers and drug dealers and on girls who looked like whores.
A young man, around twenty, approached from the opposite direction, very dark-skinned, broad, a bit shorter than Billy, who stared at the keloids on his cheeks and temples - an intricate pattern of crosshatched lines.
He noticed Billy's attention and slowed, then stopped, nodded. 'Hey.' Just stood there, smiling. Maybe he sensed that Billy was appreciating the scarification. Which he was.