Free The Skin Collector by Jeffery Deaver Page A

same descrip of the guy by the manhole when Amelia was running the scene underneath.’
    The one peering at Sachs. Who’d escaped into the crowds on Broadway.
    ‘What about the evidence on the street?’
    ‘In that storm?’ Sachs replied.
    Weather was one of the classic contaminators of evidence and one of the most pernicious.And at the scene near the manhole, there’d been another problem: The emergency workers’ footprints and gear would have destroyed any remaining evidence as they raced to get Sachs into the ambulance after the apparent poisoning from the trap that wasn’t.
    ‘So we’ll write off that portion of the scene and concentrate on underground. First, the basement of the boutique?’
    Jean Eagleston and her partnerhad photographed and searched the basement and the small utility room that opened onto it but they’d found very little. Mel Cooper examined the trace they’d collected. He reported, ‘Matches the samples from the cellar. Nothing helpful there.’
    ‘All right. The big question: What’s the tox screen result? COD?’
    They were starting with the assumption that the cause of death was poison but that wouldn’tbe known until the medical examiner completed the analysis. Sachs had called and harangued the chief examiner to send over a preliminary report ASAP. They needed both the toxin and whatever sedative, as seemed likely, the perp had injected into Chloe to subdue her. Sachs had sealed the urgency by pointing out that they believed this murder was the start of a serial killing spree. The ME, shereported, had sounded as burdened as doctors generally do, especially city employee doctors, but he’d promised to move the Chloe Moore case to the front of the queue.
    Again piqued by impatience, Rhyme said, ‘Sachs, you swabbed the site of the tattoo?’
    ‘Sure.’
    ‘Run that, Mel, and let’s see if we can get a head start on the poison.’
    ‘Will do.’ The tool Cooper used for this analysis was the gaschromatograph/mass spectrometer – two large, joined instruments sitting in the corner of the parlor. The gas chromatography portion of the equipment analyzes an unknown sample of trace by separating out each chemical it contains based on its volatility – that is, how long it takes to evaporate. The GC separates the component parts; the second device, the mass spectrometer,
identifies
the substancesby comparing their unique structure with a database of known chemicals.
    Running the noisy, hot machine – the samples are, in effect, burned – Cooper soon got results.
    ‘Cicutoxin.’
    The NYPD had an extensive toxin database, which Rhyme had used occasionally when he’d been head of Investigation Resources – the old name for Crime Scene – though murder by poison was uncommon then and even more sonow. Cooper scrolled through the entry for this substance. He paraphrased: ‘Comes from the water hemlock plant. Attacks the central nervous system. She’d have experienced severe nausea, vomiting, we can see frothing too. Muscle twitching.’ He looked up. ‘It’s one of the most deadly plants in North America.’
    He nodded at the machine. ‘And it’s been distilled. No instances of that level of concentrationever recorded. Usually takes some time to die after it’s been administered. At these levels? She’d be dead in a half hour, little longer, maybe.’
    ‘What some famous Greek killed himself with, right?’ Pulaski asked.
    Cooper said, ‘Not quite. Different strain of hemlock. Both in the carrot family, though.’
    ‘Who cares about Socrates?’ Rhyme snapped. ‘Let’s focus here. Does anyone
else
, aside fromme, notice anything troubling about the source?’
    Sachs said, ‘He could’ve found it in any field or swamp in the country.’
    ‘Exactly.’
    A
commercial
substance that was toxic, like those used in industrial processes and easily purchased on the open market, might be traced to a manufacturer and onward to a buyer. Some even had chemical tags that might