The doctor continued, ‘So, the first reason he might be interested in the Bone Collector: a psychological bonding with him.’ He chuckled. ‘An insight that, I suspect, is rather low in your estimation, Lincoln.’ He knew of Rhyme’s distrust of what the criminalist called ‘woo woo’ policing. ‘But that might hint he too is out for revenge,’ Dobyns added.

Rhyme said, ‘Noted, Doctor. We’ll put it on our evidence chart.’

‘I think you’ll be more interested in the second reason he was interested in the chapter of this book. Whatever his motive – revenge or joy killing or distracting you so he could rob the Federal Reserve – he knows you’ll be after him and he’ll want to learn as much as he can about you, your tactics, how you think. How specifically you tracked down a serial criminal. So he doesn’t make the same mistakes. He wants to know where your weaknesses are. You and Amelia.’

This made more sense to Rhyme. He nodded at Sachs, who told the doctor, ‘The book is practically a how to guide on using forensics to stop a serial criminal. And it’s clear from running the scenes that he’s been paying attention to scrubbing the evidence.’

Pulaski asked, ‘Doctor, any idea why this  victim? There was no, you know, prior contact between them that we could find.’ He gave a brief bio of Chloe Moore.

Sachs said, ‘Seems to be random.’

‘With the Bone Collector, remember, his true victims were somebody else: the city of New York, the police, you, Lincoln. I’d guess that the choice of victim by your unsub is mostly accessibility and convenience – to have a place and the time to do the tattoo undisturbed … Then I think there’s the fear factor.’

‘What’sat?’ Sellitto asked.

‘He’s got another agenda beyond murdering individuals – clearly it’s not to rob them, it’s not sexual. It may serve his purposes to put the whole city on edge. Everybody in New York’s going to be thinking twice about heading into basements and garages and laundry rooms and using back doors to their offices and apartments. Now, a few other points. First, if he’s truly been influenced by the Bone Collector, then he may think about targeting you personally, Lincoln. And Amelia. In fact, you all might be in danger. Second, he’s clearly an organized offender, as I said. And that means he’s been checking out his victims, or at least the kill sites, ahead of time.’

Rhyme said, ‘We’re going on that assumption.’

‘Good. And finally – if he were really a copycat he would have concentrated on the victim’s bones. But he’s obsessed with skin. It’s central to his goal. He could just as easily be injecting them with poison or making them drink it. Or for that matter stabbing people or shooting them. But he’s not. He’s obviously a professional artist – so every time he puts one of his designs on a body, he claims somebody else’s skin as his own.’

‘A skin collector,’ Pulaski said.

‘Exactly. If you can find out why he’s so fascinated with skin, that’s key to understanding the case.’ Rhyme heard another voice, indistinct, from the doctor’s office. ‘Ah, you’ll have to excuse me now. I’m afraid I have a session to get to.’

‘Thanks, Doctor,’ Sachs said.

After he disconnected, Rhyme told Pulaski to put Dobyns’s observations up on the chart.

Quasi babble … but, Rhyme reluctantly admitted, it might be helpful.

He said, ‘We should talk to Pam. See if anybody’s contacted her about the Bone Collector.’

Sachs nodded. ‘Not a bad idea.’

Pam was now out of the foster system and living on her own in Brooklyn, not far from where Sachs kept her apartment. It seemed unlikely that the unsub would even know about her. Because Pam was a child at the time of the Bone Collector kidnapping, her name had never come up in the press. And Serial Cities  hadn’t mentioned her either.

Sachs gave the young woman a call and left a message asking her to come over to Rhyme’s. There was something she wanted to discuss.

‘Pulaski. Get back to marble detail. I want to find where that stone dust came from.’

The doorbell buzzed. And Thom disappeared to answer it.

He returned to the parlor a moment later beside a sinewy man in his thirties, with a weathered, creased face and long blond ponytail. He also had the most extravagant beard Rhyme had ever seen. He was amused at the difference between the two standing before him. Thom was in dark dress slacks, a pastel yellow shirt and a rust colored tie. The visitor wore a spotless tuxedo jacket, way too thin for the raging weather, ironed black jeans and a black long sleeve pullover emblazoned with a red spider. His brown boots were polished like a mahogany table. The only attribute this man and the aide shared was a slender build, though Thom was a half foot taller.

‘You must be TT Gordon,’ Rhyme said.

‘Yeah. And, hey, you’re the dude in the wheelchair.’

Rhyme took in the bizarre beard, the steel rods in the ears and eyebrows.

Parts of tats were visible on the backs of Gordon’s hands; the rest of the inking vanished under his pullover. Rhyme believed he could make out POW!  on the right wrist.

He drew no conclusions about the man’s appearance. He’d long ago given up on the spurious practice of equating the essence of a person with his or her physical incarnation. His own condition was the prototype for this way of thinking.

His main reaction was: How badly had the piercings hurt? This was something Rhyme could relate to; his ears and brows were places in which he could feel pain. And the other thought: If TT Gordon ever got busted he’d be picked out of a lineup in an instant.

A nod to Sellitto, who reciprocated.

‘Hey. The wheelchair thing I said? It wasn’t as stupid as it sounded,’ Gordon said, smiling and looking at everyone in the room. His eyes returned to Rhyme’s. ‘Obviously you’re in a wheelchair. I meant, hey, you’re the famous  dude in the wheelchair. I didn’t make the connection before. When he’ – a nod at Sellitto – ‘came to my shop, he said “consultant”. You’re in the papers. I’ve seen you on TV. Why don’t you do that Nancy Grace show? That’d be very cool. Do you watch it?’

This was just natural rambling, Rhyme deduced, not awkward, I don’t want to be with a gimp rambling. The disability seemed to Gordon merely another aspect of Rhyme, like his dark hair and fleshy nose and intense eyes and trim fingernails.

An identifying marker, not a political one.

Gordon greeted the others, Sachs, Cooper and Pulaski. Then he gazed around the room, whose decor Rhyme had once described as Hewlett Packard Victorian. ‘Hm. Well. Cool.’

Sachs said, ‘We appreciate your coming here to help us.’

‘Like, no problem. I want this guy taken down. This dude, what he’s doing? It’s bad for everybody who mods for a living.’

‘What does that mean? “Mods”?’ Sachs asked.

‘Modifying bodies, you know. Inking people, piercing, cutting.’ He tapped his ear bars. ‘Everything. “Modding” covers the gamut.’ He frowned. ‘Whatever a gamut is. I don’t really know.’

Rhyme said, ‘Lon says you’re pretty well connected in the tattoo community here and that you don’t have any specific idea who it might be.’

Gordon confirmed this.

Sellitto added that Gordon had looked over a picture of the victim’s tattoo but wanted a better image; the printout hadn’t been that clear.

Cooper said, ‘I’ll call up the raw.nef files and save them as enhanced.tiffs.’

Rhyme had no clue what he was talking about. In the days when he worked crime scenes himself he used actual thirty five millimeter film that had to be developed in chemicals and printed in a darkroom. Back then you made every frame count. Now? You shot the hell out of a crime scene and culled.

Cooper said, ‘I’ll send them to the Nvidia computer – the big screen there.’

‘Whatever, dude. As long as it’s clear.’