Текст книги "The Skin Collector"

Автор книги: Jeffery Deaver

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‘Man,’ Ron Pulaski said, ‘it’s good.’

‘I don’t know the tattoo world,’ Rhyme said. ‘But I wonder if there’re only a limited number of artists who could do that in a short period of time.’

‘I’ll hit some of the bigger parlors in town,’ Sellitto said. ‘See what I can find.’

Rhyme mused, ‘Those lines.’ He pointed to the border, scallops above and below the words. ‘You were right, Sachs. They look cut, not tattooed. Like he used a razor blade or scalpel.’

Sellitto muttered, ‘Just fucking decorations. What a prick.’

‘On the chart. Don’t know what to make of that. Now, the words: “the second”. Meaning? Thoughts?’

‘The second victim?’ Pulaski offered.

Sellitto laughed. ‘This guy ain’t really covering up his tracks. We probably woulda heard if there was a number one, don’tcha think? Bet CNN would’ve caught on.’

‘Sure, true. Wasn’t thinking.’

Rhyme regarded the picture. ‘Not enough to draw conclusions at this point. And what’s the rest of the message? My impression is that somebody who knows calligraphy that well also knows spelling and grammar. Lowercase “t” on the article “the”. So something preceded it. There’s no period so something comes after the phrase.’

Sachs said, ‘I wonder if it’s a line he made up. Or is it a quotation? A puzzle?’

‘No clue … Lon, get some bodies at HQ to search the databases.’

‘Good idea. Efficient: a task force to find “the second” in a book or something? You think that’s ever appeared before, Linc?’

‘First, Lon, aren’t air quotes a bit overused? More to the point: How’s this? Have them search for the words in famous quotes about crimes, killers, tattoos, underground New York. Tell them to be creative!’

Sellitto muttered, ‘All right. “The second”. And for the number – the numeral two – with “nd” as a suffix.’

‘Hm,’ Rhyme muttered, nodding. He hadn’t thought of that.

The bulky detective placed a call, rising and walking to the corner of the parlor, and a moment later began barking orders. He disconnected and wandered back.

‘Let’s keep going,’ Rhyme said to the others.

After more trace analysis Mel Cooper announced, ‘We’ve got several instances of benzalkonium chloride.’

‘Ah,’ Rhyme said. ‘It’s a quat. Quaternary ammonium. A basic institutional sanitizer, used mostly where there’s particular concern about exposure to bacteria and a vulnerable clientele. School cafeterias, for instance. On the board.’

Cooper continued, ‘Adhesive latex.’

Rhyme announced that the product was used in everything from bandages to construction work. ‘Generic?’

‘Yep.’

‘Naturally,’ Rhyme grumbled. Forensic scientists vastly preferred brand name trace – it was more easily sourced.

The tech ran additional tests. After a few minutes he regarded the computer screen. ‘Good, good. Strong results for a type of stone. Marble. Specifically Inwood marble.’

‘What form?’ Rhyme asked. ‘Put it up on the screen.’

Cooper did and Rhyme found they were looking at dust and grains of various sizes, white, off white and beige. The tech said, ‘Fractured. See the edge on that piece in the upper left hand corner?’

‘Sure is,’ Rhyme offered. ‘Bake it!’

The tech ran a sample through the GC/MS. He announced, ‘We’re positive for Tovex residue.’

Sellitto said, ‘Tovex? Commercial explosive.’

Rhyme was nodding. ‘Had a feeling we’d find something like that. Used in blasting foundations out of rock. Given the trauma to the marble grains, our unsub picked up that trace at or near a construction site. Someplace where there’s a lot of Inwood marble. Call the city for blasting permits, rookie. And then cross reference with the geological database of the area. Now, what else?’

The scrapings beneath Chloe Moore’s fingernails revealed no skin, only off white cotton cloth and paper fibers.

Rhyme explained to Sellitto: ‘Chloe may’ve fought him and picked those up in the struggle. A shame she didn’t get a chunk of his skin. Where’s the DNA when you need it? On the board, and let’s keep at it.’

The duct tape that the unsub had used to bind Chloe’s feet was generic; the handcuffs too. And the flashlight – the beacon to reveal his handiwork – was a cheap, plastic variety. Neither that nor the D batteries inside bore fingerprints, and no hairs or other trace adhered, except a bit of adhesive similar to that used on sticky rollers – exactly what crime scene officers employed to pick up trace. As Sachs had speculated, he’d probably rolled himself before leaving for the crime scene.

‘This boy’s even better than I thought,’ Rhyme said. Dismay mixing with a certain reluctant admiration.

‘Now, any electrical outlets down there, Sachs? I don’t recall.’

‘No. The spotlights that the first responders set up were battery powered.’

‘So his tattoo gun would be battery operated too. Rookie – when you take a break from your marble quest, find out who makes battery tattoo guns.’

Pulaski went back online, saying, ‘Hopefully, they’ll be pretty rare.’

‘Now, that’s going to be interesting.’

‘What?’

‘Finding a tattoo gun that’s filled with hope.’

‘That’s filled with … what?’

Sellitto was smiling sourly. He knew what was coming.

Rhyme continued, ‘That’s what “hopefull”Y means. Your sentence didn’t say “I hope that portable tattoo guns’re rare.” Using “hopefull”Y as a disjunct – an opinion by the speaker – is non standard. English teachers and journalists disapprove.’

The young officer’s head bobbed. ‘Lincoln, sometimes I think I’ve walked into a Quentin Tarantino movie when I’m talking to you.’

Rhyme’s eyebrows arched. Continue.

Pulaski grumbled, ‘You know, that scene where two hit men are going to blow somebody away but they talk and talk and talk for ten minutes about how “eager” and “anxious” aren’t the same, or how “disinterested” doesn’t mean “uninterested”. You just want to slap ’em.’

Sachs coughed a laugh.

‘Those two misuses bother me just as much,’ Rhyme muttered. ‘And good job knowing the distinction. Now, that last bit of evidence. That’s the one I’m most interested in.’

He turned back to the collection bag, thinking he’d have to find out who this Tarantino was.

CHAPTER 10

Mel Cooper carefully opened the sole remaining evidence bag over an examination table. Using tweezers, he extracted the crumpled ball of paper. He began to unwrap it. Slowly.

‘Where was it, Amelia?’ he asked.

‘About three feet from the body. Below one of those yellow boxes.’

‘I saw those,’ Rhyme said. ‘IFON. Electric grid, telephone, I’d guess.’

The paper was from the upper corner of a publication, torn out. It was about three inches long, two high. The words on the front, the right hand page, were these:

ies

that his greatest skill was his ability to anticipate

On the reverse page:

the body was found.

Rhyme looked at Cooper, who was using a Bausch + Lomb microscope to compare the paper fibers from this sample with those found under the victim’s fingernails.

‘We can associate them. Probably from the same source. And there were no other samples of the cloth fibers under her nails from the scene.’

‘So the presumption is that she tore the scrap in a struggle with him.’

Sellitto asked, ‘Why’d he have it with him? What was it?’

Rhyme noted that the stock was uncoated, so the scrap was likely not from a magazine. Nor was the paper newsprint, so the source probably wasn’t a daily or weekly paper or tabloid.

‘It’s probably from a book,’ he announced, staring at the triangular scrap.

‘But what’d the scenario be?’ Pulaski asked.

‘Good question: You mean if the scrap was from the pocket of our unsub and she tore it off while grappling with him, how can the pages be from a book?’

‘Right.’

‘Because I would think he sliced important pages out of  the book and kept them with him. I want to know what that scrap is from.’

‘The easy way?’ Cooper suggested.

‘Oh, Google Books? Right. Or whatever that thing is called, that online service that has ninety percent or however many of the world’s books in a database. Sure, give it a shot.’

But, unsurprisingly, the search returned no hits. Rhyme didn’t know much about how the copyright laws worked but he suspected that there were more than a few authors of books still protected by the US Code that didn’t want to share their creative sweat labor royalty free.

‘So, it’s the hard way,’ Rhyme announced. ‘What do they call that in computer hacking? Brute force attack?’ He reflected for a moment then added, ‘But we can maybe narrow down the search. Let’s see if we can find out when  it was printed and look for books published around then that deal with – to start – crimes. The word “bodies” is a hint there. Now, let’s get a date.’

‘Carbon dating?’ Ron Pulaski asked, drawing a smile from Mel Cooper. ‘What?’ the young officer asked.

‘Haven’t read my chapter on radiocarbon, rookie?’ Referring to Rhyme’s textbook on forensic science.

‘Actually I have, Lincoln.’

‘And?’

Pulaski recited, ‘Carbon dating is the comparison of non degrading carbon 12 with degrading carbon 14, which will give an idea of the age of the object being tested. I said “idea”; I think you said “approximation”.’

‘Ah, well quoted. Just a shame you missed the footnote.’

‘Oh. There were footnotes?’

‘The error factor for carbon dating is thirty to forty years. And that’s with recent samples. If our perp had carried around a chapter printed on papyrus or dinosaur hide, the deviation would be greater.’ Rhyme gestured toward the scrap. ‘So, no, carbon dating isn’t for us.’

‘At least it would tell us if it was printed in the last thirty or forty years.’

‘Well, we know that ,’ Rhyme snapped. ‘It was printed in the nineties, I’m almost certain. I want something more specific.’

Now Sellitto was frowning. ‘How do you know the decade, Linc?’

‘The typeface. It’s called Myriad. Created by Robert Slimbach and Carol Twombly for Adobe Systems. It became Apple’s font.’

‘It looks like any other sans serif font to me,’ Sachs said.

‘Look at the “y” descender and the slanting “e”.’

‘You studied that?’ asked Pulaski, as if a huge gap in his forensic education threatened to swallow him whole.

Years ago Rhyme had run a kidnapping case in which the perp had crafted a ransom note by cutting letters from a magazine. He’d used characters from editorial headlines as well as from a number of advertisements. Correlating the typefaces from dozens of magazines and advertisers’ logos, Rhyme had concluded it was from a particular issue of the Atlantic Monthly . A warrant for subscriber lists – and some other evidence – led to the perp’s door and the rescue of the victim. He explained this to Pulaski.

‘But how do we date it more specifically?’ Sellitto asked.

‘The ink,’ Rhyme said.

‘Tags?’ Cooper asked.

‘Doubt it.’ In the 1960s ink manufacturers began adding tags – chemical markers, in the same way that explosives manufacturers did – so that, in the event of a crime, the ink sample would be easy to trace to a single source or at least to a brand name of ink or pen. (The primary purpose of tagging was to track down forgers, though the markers also nailed a number of kidnappers and psychopathic killers, who left messages at the scenes of their crimes.) But the ink used for book printing, as in this sample, was sold in large batches, which were rarely if ever tagged.

So, Rhyme explained, they needed to compare the composition of this particular ink with those in the NYPD ink database.

‘Extract the ink, Mel. Let’s find out what it’s made out of.’

From a rack of tools above the evidence examination tables, Cooper selected a modified hypodermic syringe, the point partially filed down. He poked this through the paper seven times. The resulting tiny disks, all of which contained samples of the ink, he soaked in pyridine to extract the ink itself. He dried the solution to a powdery residue, which he then analyzed.

Cooper and Rhyme looked over the resulting chromatogram – a bar chart of peaks and valleys representing the ink used in the printing of the mysterious book.

By itself, the analysis meant nothing, but running the results through the database revealed that the ink was similar to those used in the production of adult trade books from 1996 through 2000.

‘Adult?’ Pulaski asked.

‘No, not your  kind of adult books,’ Sellitto said, laughing.

‘My–’ The officer was blushing furiously. ‘Wait.’

Rhyme continued, ‘It means as opposed to juvenile publishing. Legitimate  books for adults. And the paper? Check acidity.’

Cooper ran a basic pH analysis, using a small corner of the paper.

‘It’s very acidic.’

‘That means it’s from a mass produced commercial hardcover – not paperback because they’re printed on newsprint. And it’s commercial because more expensive, limited edition books are printed on low acid or acid free paper.

‘Add that to your team’s to do list, Lon. Find the book. I’m leaning toward nonfiction, the aforementioned years. Possibly true crime. And each chapter devoted to a different subject, since he sliced out only what he needed. Have your people start talking to editors, bookstores, crime book collectors … and true crime writers themselves. How many could there be?’

‘Yeah, yeah, in all the free time they have when they’re not browsing for the trillion quotations featuring the words “the second”.’

‘Oh, and by the way, make it a priority. If our unsub went to enough trouble to find a copy of the book, cut out the pages and carry them around with him, I really  want to know what’s in it.’

The big detective was looking at the picture of the tattoo once more. He said to Cooper, ‘Print out a picture of that, willya, Mel? I’ll start hitting those tattoo parlors – is that what they still call ’em? Probably “studio” now. And get me a list of the big ones.’

Rhyme watched Cooper print out the picture then go online with the NYC business licensing agency. He downloaded a list of what seemed to be about thirty tattoo businesses. Cooper handed it to the detective.

‘That many?’ Sellitto grumbled. ‘Wonderful. I just can’t really get outside enough on these fine fall days.’ He tossed the list and the photo of the tattoo into his briefcase. Then pulled on his Burberry and dug his wadded gloves from the pocket. Without a farewell he stalked out of the room. Rhyme once again heard the wind briefly as the door opened and slammed shut.

‘And, rookie, how’re we coming on the marble?’

The young officer turned to a nearby computer. He read through the screen. ‘Still going through blasting permits. They’re blowing up a lot of stuff in the city at the moment.’

‘Keep at it.’

‘You bet. I’ll have some answers soon.’ He turned his gaze to Rhyme. ‘Hopefully.’

‘Hopefully?’ Rhyme frowned.

‘Yep. I’m filled with hope that I don’t get any more damn grammar lessons from you, Lincoln.’

237 Elizabeth Street

Victim: Chloe Moore, 26

– Probably no connection to Unsub

– No sexual assault, but touching of skin

Unsub 11 5

– White male

– Slim to medium build

– Stocking cap

– Thigh length dark coat

– Dark backpack

– Wore booties

– No friction ridges

COD: Poisoning with cicutoxin, introduced into system by tattooing

– From water hemlock plant

– No known source

– Concentrated, eight times normal

Sedated with propofol

– How obtained? Access to medical supplies?

Tattooed with ‘the second’ Old English typeface, surrounded by scallops

– Part of message?

– Task force at police HQ checking this out

Portable tattoo gun used as weapon

– Model unknown

Cotton fiber

– Off white

– Probably from Unsub’s shirt, torn in struggle

Page from book, true crime?

– Probably torn from Unsub’s pocket in struggle

– Probably mass produced hardcover 1996–2000

ies

that his greatest skill was his ability to anticipate

– On next page:

the body was found.

Possibly used adhesive rollers to remove trace from clothing prior to attack

Handcuffs

– Generic, cannot be sourced

Flashlight

– Generic, cannot be sourced

Duct tape

– Generic, cannot be sourced

Trace evidence

Nitric oxide, ozone, iron manganese, nickel, silver beryllium, chlorinated hydrocarbon, acetylene

– Possibly oxy fuel welding supplies

Tetrodotoxin

– Fugu fish poison

– Zombie drug

– Minute amounts

– Not used on victim here

Stercobilin, urea 9.3 g/L, chloride 1.87 g/L, sodium 1.17 g/L, potassium 0.750 g/L, creatinine 0.670 g/L

– fecal material

– Possibly suggesting interest/obsession in underground

– From future kill sites underground?

Benzalkonium chloride

– Quaternary ammonium (quat), institutional sanitizer

Adhesive latex

– Used in bandages and construction, other uses too

Inwood marble

– Dust and fine grains

Tovex explosive

– Probably from blast site

CHAPTER 11

‘Hey, dude. Take a seat. I’ll get to you in a few. You want to check out the booklet there? Find something fun, something to impress the ladies. You’re never too old for ink.’

The man’s eyes alighted on Lon Sellitto’s unadorned ring finger and turned back to the young blonde he was speaking to.

The tattoo artist – and owner of the parlor (yeah, parlor, not studio ) – was early thirties, scrawny as a crab leg. He was wearing well cut and pressed black jeans and a sleeveless T shirt, white, immaculate. His dark blond hair was pulled back in a long ponytail. He had a dandy beard, an elaborate affair that descended from his upper lip in four thin lines of dark silky hair that circled his mouth and reunited on his chin in a spiral. His cheeks were shaved smooth but his sideburns, sharp as hooks, swept forward from his ears. A steel rod descended from his upper ear down to the lobe. Another, smaller, pierced each eyebrow vertically. After the facial hair and the metalwork, the full color tattoos of Superman on one forearm and Batman on the other were pretty tame.

Sellitto stepped forward.

‘A minute, dude, I was saying.’ He studied the cop for a moment. ‘You know, for an older guy, a bigger guy – I don’t mean any offense – you’re a good candidate. Your skin isn’t going to sag.’ His voice faded. ‘Oh, hey. Look at that.’

Sellitto had grown tired of the ramble. He’d thrust his gold shield toward the hipster in a way that was both aggressive and lethargic.

‘Okay. Police. You’re police?’

The tat artist was sitting on a stool next to a comfortable looking but well worn reclining chair of black leather, occupied by the girl he’d been speaking with when Sellitto walked in. She wore excessively tight jeans and a gray tank top over what seemed to be three bras or spaghetti strap camisoles, or whatever they were called. Pink, green and blue. Her strikingly golden hair was long on the left and crew cut on the right. Pretty face if you could get past the skewed hair and nervous eyes.

‘You want to talk to me?’ the tattoo artist asked.

‘I want to talk to TT Gordon?’

‘I’m TT.’

‘Then I want to talk to you.’

Nearby another artist, a chubby thirty something in cargo pants and T, was working away on another client – a massive bodybuilder – who was lying face down on a leather bed, like a masseur would use. The man was getting an elaborate motorcycle inked on his back.

Both employee and customer looked at Sellitto, who stared back.

They returned to inking and being inked.

The detective shot a glance at Gordon and the girl with the unbalanced hair. She was upset, really bothered. Gordon, though, didn’t seem fazed by the cop’s presence. The owner of the Sonic Hum Drum Tattoo Parlor had all his permits in a row and his tax bills paid, the detective knew. He’d checked.

‘Let me just finish up here.’

Sellitto said, ‘It’s important.’

‘This’s important too,’ Gordon said, ‘dude.’

‘No, dude,’ Sellitto said. ‘What you’re going to do is sit down over there and answer my questions. Because my  important is more important than your  important. And, Miss Gaga, you’re gonna have to leave.’

She was nodding. Breathless.

‘But–’ Gordon began.

Sellitto asked bluntly, ‘You ever hear about section two sixty point twenty one, New York State Penal Code?’

‘I. Uhm. Sure.’ Gordon nodded matter of factly.

‘It’s a crime to tattoo minors under the age of eighteen and the crime is defined as unlawfully dealing with a child in the second degree.’ Turning to the client. ‘How old’re you really?’ Sellitto barked.

She was crying. ‘Seventeen. I’m sorry. I just, I didn’t, I really, I mean …’

‘You want to finish that sentence sometime soon?’

‘Please, I just, I mean …’

‘Lemme put it this way: Get outta here.’

She fled, leaving behind her vinyl leather jacket. As both Sellitto and Gordon watched, she stopped, debated then snuck back fast, grabbed the garment and vanished again, permanently this time.

Turning to the owner of the store, Sellitto was enjoying himself, though he was also noting that Gordon still wasn’t cringing with guilt. Or fear. The detective pushed harder. ‘That happens to be a class B misdemeanor. Punishable by three months in jail.’

Gordon said, ‘Punishable by up to  three months in jail but production of an apparently valid identification card is an affirmative defense. Her license? It was really, really good. Top notch. I believed it was valid. The jury’d believe it was valid.’

Sellitto tried not to blink but wasn’t very successful.

Gordon continued, ‘Not that it mattered. I wasn’t going to ink her. I was in my Sigmund mode.’

Sellitto cocked his head.

‘Freud. The doctor is in, kind of thing. She wanted a work, real badly, but I was counseling  her out of it. She’s some kid from Queens or Brooklyn got dumped by a guy for a slut was inked with quinto death heads.’

‘What?’

‘Five. Quinto. Death heads, you know. She wanted seven. Septo.’

‘And how was the therapy going, Doc?’

The man pulled a face. ‘It was going great – I was talking her out of it. When you walked in. Discouragus interruptus. But I think she’s scared off for the time being.’

‘Talking her out of it?’

‘Right. I was making some shit up about inking would ruin her skin. In a few months she’d look ten years older. Which is funny because women in the South Pacific used to get tattooed because it made them look younger . Lips and eyelids. Ouch, yeah. I figured she wouldn’t know Samoan customs.’

‘But you thought she was legal. Then why talk her out of it?’

‘Dude. First, I had my doubts about the license. But that wasn’t the point. She came in here for all the wrong reasons. You get inked to make a positive statement about yourself. Not for revenge, not to shove it in somebody’s face. Not because you want to be that stupid girl with a dragon tattoo. Ink’s about who you  are, not being anybody else. Get it?’

Not really, Sellitto’s expression said.

But Gordon continued, ‘You saw her hair, the goth makeup? Well, despite all that, she was not  a candidate for inking. She had a Hello Kitty purse, for Christ’s sake. And a Saint Timothy’s cross around her neck. In your day, you would’ve called her the girl next door, you know, going to the malt shop.’

My day? Malt? Still, Sellitto found himself leaning reluctantly toward the veracity of his story.

‘Besides, I didn’t have a big enough pussy ball for her,’ the young man said, grinning. Pushing Sellitto some.

‘A …?’

He explained: a tennis ball you gave to customers you didn’t think could handle the pain of the tattooing process. ‘That kid couldn’t take it. But, you gonna get inked, you gotta have the pain. Them’s the rules: pain and blood. The commitment, dude. Get it? So what can I do you for, now that I know there’s no, you know, mid life crisis involved.’

The detective grumbled. ‘You ever say “Dig it” instead of “Get it”?’

‘“Dig it.” From your day.’

‘From my day,’ Sellitto said. ‘Me and the beatniks.’

TT Gordon laughed.

‘There’s a case we’re working on. I need some help.’

‘I guess. Gimme one minute.’ Gordon stepped to a third workstation. This fellow tat artist, arms blue and red sleeves of elaborate inking, was working on a man in his late twenties. He was getting a flying hawk on his biceps. Sellitto thought of the falcons on Rhyme’s window ledges.

The customer looked like he’d just subwayed it up here from Wall Street and would head back to his law firm afterward for an all nighter.

Gordon looked over the job. Gave some suggestions.

Sellitto examined the shop. It seemed to belong to a different era: specifically, the 1960s. The walls were covered with hundreds of bright samples of tats: faces, religious symbols, cartoon characters, slogans, maps, landscapes, skulls … many of them psychedelic. Also, several dozen photos of piercings available for purchase. Some frames were covered by curtains. Sellitto could guess in what body parts those studs and pins resided, though he wondered why the modesty.

The inking stations reminded Sellitto of those in a hair salon with the reclining chairs for customers and stools for the artists. Equipment and bottles and rags sat on a counter. On the wall was a mirror, on which were pasted some bumper stickers and taped certificates from the Board of Health. Despite the fact that the place existed for the purpose of spattering body fluids about, it looked immaculate. The smell of disinfectant was strong and there were warning signs everywhere about cleaning equipment, sterilizing.

130 Degrees Celsius Is Your Friend.

Gordon finished his suggestions and gestured Sellitto to the back room. They pushed through a plastic bead curtain into the office part of the shop. It too was well ordered and clean.

Gordon took a bottle of water from a mini fridge and offered it to Sellitto, who wasn’t putting in his mouth anything from this shop. Shook his head.

The owner of the store unscrewed the top and drank. He nodded to the doorway, where the beads still pendulumed. ‘That’s what we’ve become.’ As if Sellitto was his new best dude.

‘How’s that?’

‘The guy in the business suit,’ he said softly. The hawk man. ‘You see where his tat is?’

‘His biceps.’

‘Right. High. Easy to hide. Guy’s got two point three children, or will have in the next couple years. Went to Columbia or NYU. Lawyer or accountant.’ A shake of the head. The ponytail swung. ‘Tats used to be insidious. The inked were bad boys and girls. Now getting a work’s like putting on a charm bracelet or a tie. There’s a joke somebody’s going to open a tattoo franchise in strip malls. Call it Tat bucks.’

‘That’s why the rods?’ Sellitto nodded at the bars in Gordon’s head.

‘You have to go to greater lengths to make a statement. That sounded effete. Sorry. So. What can I do for you, Officer?’

‘I’m making the rounds of the big parlors in the city. None of ’em could help so far but they all said I had to come see you. This’s the oldest parlor in the city, they said. And you know everybody in the community.’

‘Hard to say about the oldest. Inking – I mean modern inking in the US, not tribal – pretty much began in New York. The Bowery, late eighteen hundreds. But it was banned in ’sixty one after some hepatitis outbreaks. Only legalized again in ’ninety seven. I found some records that this shop dated back to the twenties – man, those must’ve been the days. You got a tat, you were Mr Alternative. Or Miss, though women rarely got works done then. Not unheard of. Winston Churchill’s mother had a snake eating its tail.’ He noted that Sellitto was not much interested in the history lesson. A shrug. My  enthusiasm isn’t your  enthusiasm. Got it.

‘This is, what I’m about to tell you, this’s confidential.’

‘No worries there, dude. People tell me all sorts of shit when they’re under the machine. They’re nervous and so they start rambling away. I forget everything I hear. Amnesia, you know.’ A frown. ‘You here about somebody might be a customer of mine?’

‘Don’t have any reason to think so but could be.’ Sellitto added, ‘If we showed you a tat, you think you could tell us something about the guy who did it?’

‘Maybe. Everybody’s got their own style. Even two artists working from the same stencil’re going to be different. It’s how you learned to ink, the machine you use, the needles you hack together. A thousand things. Anyway, I can’t guarantee it but I’ve worked with artists from all over the country, been to conventions in almost every state. I might be able to help you out.’

‘Okay, here.’

Sellitto dug into his briefcase and extracted the photo Mel Cooper had printed out.

Gordon bent low and, frowning, studied the picture carefully. ‘The guy drew this knows what he’s doing – definitely a pro. But I don’t get the inflammation. There’s no ink. The skin’s all swollen and rough. Real badly infected. And there’s no color. Did he use invisible ink?’

Sellitto thought Gordon was joking and said so. Gordon explained that some people didn’t want to make a commitment, so they were inked with special solutions that appeared invisible but showed up under blacklight.

‘The pussy ball crowd.’

‘You got it, dude.’ A fist poked in Sellitto’s direction. The detective declined to bump. Then the artist frowned. ‘I got a feeling something else is going on, right?’

Sellitto nodded. They’d kept the poison out of the press; this was the sort of MO that might lead to copycatting. And if there were informants, or the perp himself decided to ring up City Hall and gloat, they’d need to know that the caller had access to the actual details of the killing.

Besides, as a general rule, Sellitto preferred to explain as little as possible when canvassing for witnesses or asking advice. In this case, though, he had no option. He needed Gordon’s help. And Sellitto decided he kind of liked the guy.

Dude  …

‘The suspect we’re looking for, he used poison instead of ink.’

The artist’s eyes widened, the metal pins lifting dramatically. ‘Jesus. No! Jesus.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Ever hear about anybody doing that?’

‘No way.’ Gordon brushed the backs of his fingers across the complicated facial hair. ‘That’s just wrong. Man. See, we’re … what we do is we’re sort of this hybrid of artist and cosmetic surgeon – people put their trust in us. We’ve got a special relationship with people.’ Gordon’s voice grew taut. ‘Using inking to kill somebody. Oh, man.’

The parlor phone rang and Gordon ignored it. But a few moments later the heavy set tat artist – working on the motorcycle – stuck his head through the curtain of beads.

‘Hey, TT.’ A nod to Sellitto.

‘What?’

‘Got a call. Can we ink a hundred dollar bill on a guy’s neck?’ The accent was southern. Sellitto couldn’t place where.

‘A hundred? Yeah, why not?’