The tunnel leading to the hospital was long – several hundred feet – and painted a gray that you associated with warships. Pipes ran overhead. It was dark because the hospital, perhaps in a move to save money, had placed a bulb in every third socket. There were no security cameras.

Billy knew time was critical but he, of course, had to make one stop. He’d noted the detour yesterday, when he’d checked to see if this would be a suitably private route into the hospital.

The sign on the door had intrigued him.

He’d simply had to go inside.

And he did so now, aware of the time pressure. But feeling like a kid playing hooky to hang out in a toy store.

The large room, labeled by the sign Specimens, was dim but lit well enough by the emergency exit lights, which cast an eerie rosy glow on the contents: a thousand jars filled with body parts floating in a jaundiced liquid, presumably formaldehyde.

Eyes, hands, livers, hearts, lungs, sexual organs, breasts, feet. Whole fetuses too. Billy noted that most of the samples dated to the early twentieth century. Maybe back then medical students used the real thing to learn anatomy, while today’s generation went for high def computer images.

Against the wall were shelves of bones, hundreds of them. He thought back to the infamous case Lincoln Rhyme had worked years ago, the Bone Collector crimes. Yet bones held little interest for Billy Haven.

The Rule of Bone?

No, didn’t resonate like the Rule of Skin. No comparison.

He now walked up and down the aisles, examining the jars, which ranged from a few inches to three feet in height. He paused and stared, eye-to-eye with a severed head. The features seemed of South Pacific heritage to Billy, or so he wanted to believe – because, to his delight, the head sported a tattoo: a cross just below where the hairline would have been.

Billy took this as a good sign. The word ‘tattoo’ comes from the Polynesian or Samoan tatau, the process of inking the lower male torso with an elaborate geometric design, called a pe’a (and a woman’s with a similar inking, called a malu). The process takes weeks and is extremely painful. Those who finish the inking get a special title and are respected for their courage. Those who don’t even try are called ‘naked’ in Samoan and marginalized. The worst stigma, though, was awarded to the men and women who started the procedure but didn’t finish it because they couldn’t stand the pain. The shame remained with them forever.

Billy liked the fact that they defined themselves according to their relationship to inking.