‘Sure. Clothes?’

‘When he came at me in the garage, he was in coveralls, I think. I was freaked.’ More shivering. ‘But I’d seen him earlier and he was wearing something else. If it was him. He went into that building there.’

Ah, maybe they had an intact crime scene after all. Sachs sent a CS officer to take a look, with an Emergency Service backup.

‘Did he say anything?’ Sellitto asked.

‘No. Just jabbed me with a needle. Then I started to pass out. But I saw him …’ His voice faded. ‘I saw him get a scalpel out of his backpack.’

‘A scalpel, not just a knife?’

‘Definitely a scalpel. And he looked like he knew what to do with it. Oh, and he was touching my skin. On my stomach. Touching and pinching it. Jesus. What was that all about?’

‘He’s done that before,’ Sachs said. ‘We don’t know exactly why.’

‘Oh, but I remember that as he reached down, his sleeve went up, you know. And I saw he had this tattoo. It was weird. A centipede, I’m pretty sure. Yeah. But, you know, with a face.’

‘What color was it?’ Sellitto asked.

‘Red. Now, next I know I came to and was choking and the cops, the police were dragging me out of the water. I was so cold, cold. Man. It was like I was spinning around in the ocean. Is this the guy who’s been killing those people in town?’

Sometimes you withheld, sometimes you told.

‘It’s likely.’

‘Why me?’

‘We aren’t sure what his motive is. Do you have any enemies, anybody who might want to do this?’ Sachs and Rhyme had not completely dismissed the theory that the unsub was using the apparent serial killings to cover up the murder of a specific victim, lost in the general carnage of Unsub 11-5.

But Alexander said, ‘I do computer security work and I was thinking I jammed the wrong hacker, and he wanted to nail me. I thought the guy who went into the building, the one maybe following me, might’ve been a strong-arm, whatever you’d call it. But I don’t know of anybody specific.’

‘That’s probably unlikely,’ Sellitto said. ‘We think the people he’s picking are random.’

Happenstance victims …

They took Alexander’s contact information.

Sachs donned gloves and collected the cuffs, which had been removed by a responding, put them into a collection bag and filled out the chain-of-custody card. She made a note to get the fingerprints of the medic who’d removed the cuffs. But she had no doubt that their diligent unsub wasn’t going to get careless now.

They stepped out of the ambulance and were blasted by the chill wind.