Culturally, centipedes are depicted for two purposes: One, to intimidate enemies. The image of a walking snake, armed with venom delivering fangs, taps into root fears of humans. We came across this quotation from a Tibetan Buddhist: ‘If you enjoy frightening others, you will be reincarnated as a centipede.’

Two, centipedes represent invasion of apparently safe places. Centipedes will make their homes in shoes, beds, couches, cradles, dresser drawers. The theory is that the insect represents the idea that what we think is safe really isn’t.

Note that some people have tattoos based on The Human Centipede, a particularly bad gross out film in which three people are sewn together to form what the title suggests. These tattoos have nothing to do with the centipede insect.

‘Reads like a bad term paper,’ Rhyme muttered. ‘Mumbo jumbo but print it out, tape it up.’

The door buzzer sounded and he was amused to notice everyone else in the room start. Cooper and Sachs dropped their hands near their weapons – the aftershock of the attempted attack earlier today. Though he doubted their unsub would return, much less announce his arrival with the bell.

Thom checked the door and let Ron Pulaski into the town house.

He walked in, noticed everyone’s troubled faces and asked, ‘What’s up?’

He was told about the attempted attack.

‘Poison you, Lincoln? Oh, man.’

‘It’s okay, rookie. Still here to torment you. How did the undercover job go?’

‘I think I did okay.’

‘Tell us.’

He explained how the trip to the funeral home had gone, meeting the lawyer, the man’s reluctance to say much or reveal his clients.

A lawyer. Interesting.

Pulaski continued, ‘I think I won him over. I called you a son of a bitch, Lincoln.’

‘That work for you?’

‘Yeah, felt good.’

Rhyme barked a laugh.

‘Then I did what you told me. I suggested – didn’t say anything exactly – but I suggested that I’d worked with Logan. And that I’d been in touch recently.’

‘Did you get a card?’

‘No. And Weller didn’t offer. He was keeping his cards close to his chest.’

‘And you didn’t want to overplay your hand.’

Pulaski said, ‘I like that, what you just said. You slapped down my cliché with one of your own.’

The kid was really coming into his own. ‘Anything you could deduce?’

‘I tried to see if he was from California but he wouldn’t say. But he was tanned. Looked healthy, balding, stocky. Southern accent. Name was Dave Weller. I’ll check him out.’

‘Well, good. We’ll see if he makes a move. If not, I’ll talk to Nance Laurel in the DA’s Office about getting a subpoena to scoop up the funeral home records. But that’s a last resort; I want to keep you in play for as long as we can. Okay. Not a bad job, rookie. We wait. Now: to the task at hand. Unsub 11 5. He’s still got his message to complete. “the second”. “forty”. “seventeenth”. He’s not through yet. I want to know where he’s going to hit next. We have to move on it.’

He wheeled closer to the chart. The answers are there someplace, he thought. Answers to where he would strike next, who he was, what his purpose in orchestrating these terrible attacks might be.

But those were answers as shadowed as the sleet laden skies of New York.

582 E. 52nd Street (Belvedere Parking Garage)

Victim: Braden Alexander

– Not killed

Unsub 11 5

– See details from prior scenes

– Six feet

– Yellow latex mask

– Yellow gloves

– Possibly man in Identi Kit image

– Possibly coveralls

– Probably from Midwest, West Virginia, mountains – other rural setting

– Had scalpel

Sedated with propofol

– How obtained? Access to medical supplies? (No local thefts)

Potential Kill Zone

– Underneath garage

– Similar infrastructure to other scenes

• IFON

• ConEd

• Metro North rail Emergency Communication Link

Handcuffs

– Generic, cannot be sourced

Tattoo

– Implants

– ‘17th’

– Loaded with concentrated nicotine

• Nightshade family

• Too many locations to source

Trace from plastic bag

– Human albumin and sodium chloride (plastic surgery in his plans?)

– ‘No. 3’ written on bag in red water soluble ink generally used for water treatment but not in prior locations or here, so could be a poison for future attack (however too many sources to find)

Sidney Place, Brooklyn Heights (Pam Willoughby’s apartment)

Victim: Seth McGuinn

– Not killed, minor injuries

Unsub

– Red centipede tattoo

– Confirmed had American Eagle tattoo machine

– Fit general description from earlier attacks

– Coveralls

Sedated with propofol

– How obtained? Access to medical supplies? (No local thefts)

American Medical 31 gauge single use hypodermic syringe.

– Used primarily for plastic surgery

Toxic extract from white baneberry plant (doll’s eyes)

– Cardiogenic

No friction ridges

No footprints (wore booties)

Handcuffs

– Generic, cannot be sourced

Trace:

– Fibers from blueprint/engineering diagram

– Cicutoxin trace, probably from earlier scene

Rhyme Townhouse

Unsub

– No friction ridges

– No footprints (booties)

– Talented lock picker (used pick gun?)

Hair

– Beard stubble, but probably from prior scene

Toxin

– Tremetol from snakeroot

Leaving the poisoned whisky for Rhyme had been as exhilarating as Billy Haven had expected. More, actually.

Part of this was the need to derail the criminalist’s investigation. But part too was the thrill of the game. Sneaking inside, right under the man’s nose, while he and his associates were in the front hall, watching the excitement in the park.

Dark skinned male …

Making his way through the East Village, Billy was reflecting that the Commandments took into account nearly everything about the Modification. But some contingencies it didn’t cover. Like poisoning the forensic expert who anticipated everything.

He was now on a similar mission.

Thou shalt be prepared to improvise.

The residents in this part of the city seemed frazzled, unclean, distracted, tense. After the abortive trip to the hospital in Marble Hill, escaping, he’d felt a certain contempt for those on the streets of the Bronx, but at least he’d observed plenty of families, shopping together, going into diners together, heading to or from school events. Here, everyone seemed on their own. People in their twenties mostly, wearing threadbare winter coats and ugly boots, protecting them from the gray yellow slush. A few couples but even they seemed drawn together by either rootless infatuation or desperation. No one appeared really in love.

He pitied them but he felt contempt for these people too.

Billy thought, naturally, of Lovely Girl. But now he wasn’t sad. Everything was going to be all right. He was confident. All would be made right. Full circle.

The Rule of Skin …

He walked a few blocks farther until he came to the storefront. The sign on the door reported Open  but there was no one inside, not in the shop itself, though in the back he could see a shadow of movement. He looked over the art and posters and photos in the windows. Superheroes, animals, flags, monsters. Slogans. Rock groups.

A thousand examples of tattoos.

Mostly silly and commercial and pointless. Like TV shows and Madison Avenue advertising. He mentally sneered at the tackiness on display.

How skin art had changed over time, Billy reflected. Inking was, in ancient days, a serious affair. For the first thousand or more years of its existence, tattooing was not primarily about decoration. Until the 1800s body art was ritualistic and bound up with religion and societal structure. Primitive people tattooed themselves for a number of practical reasons: defining class or tribe, for instance, or sucking up to this god or that. The art served another reason too, vital: identification of your soul for entry into the underworld; if you were unmarked in life, you’d be rejected by the gatekeeper and wander the earth after death, weeping for eternity. Inking acted too as a barrier to keep your soul from migrating out of the body (the origin of the chain and barbed wire body art so common nowadays on biceps and necks). And high on the list of reasons people inked themselves was to open a portal so evil spirits would flee the body, like wasps out an open car window – spirits that would, say, prod them to do something they didn’t want to do.