Below that, the words: I SURVIVED.
“Hey,” Mike said, not taking his eyes off his work.
Duckworth said, “Hi.” Then, “That’s some tattoo.” There was no approval in his voice.
The man in the chair smiled. “You get it, right?”
“I get it,” Duckworth said.
“May twenty-third of last year,” he said. “I didn’t drink the water.”
“Lucky you.”
Dolly pointed to the tattoo. “Jeez, Mike, shouldn’t the 23 be first, and then the 5?”
“I don’t think so,” Mike said, suddenly looking worried. He glanced at his customer. “That’s the way you wanted it, right?”
“You got it.”
“Whew. You scared me for a sec, Dolly.”
Mike finally looked at Duckworth. “What can I do ya for?” He moved the magnifying goggles up to his hairline.
“I want to show you something,” Duckworth said, getting out his phone. He tapped the screen and brought up the picture he’d taken of Gaffney. “Do you know this man?”
Mike studied it for three seconds. “Nope.”
“You’re sure?”
“Pretty sure. Dolly, you recognize that dude?”
Dolores gave the picture a long look, pursed her lips, and said, “Can’t say that I do.”
“I have another picture,” Duckworth said. He brought up the picture of Gaffney’s back, then held the phone in Mike’s direction.
“Jesus, what am I looking at?” He slid the magnifying glasses back down, studied the shot, then raised them again.
“What the fuck is that?” he asked.
“That’s someone’s idea of a tattoo,” the detective said. “Recognize the handiwork?”
“Are you kidding me? That’s a goddamn abortion you got there. May I?” He was asking to hold the phone to get a better look. He set the tattoo gun down and, using thumb and forefinger, blew up the image to examine the details. “Is this for real? Someone actually got this tattoo?”
“Lemme see?” said Dolly. Mike handed her the phone. “Whoa. This guy should definitely get his money back.”
The guy in the chair wanted a peek, too. “Man, please don’t do that to me.”
Duckworth took his phone back and asked his question again, in a slightly different way. “You any idea who might have done this?”
Mike had his own question. “Why would someone get a tatt like that?”
“It wasn’t voluntary,” Duckworth said.
Mike’s eyes went wide. “Someone did that without his permission?”
“That’s fuckin’ crazy,” Dolly said.
“How could someone sit still that long and let someone do that to him?” Mike wanted to know.
Duckworth felt he’d told them enough already. “So you don’t know whose work this might be?”
“I’d say a four-year-old did it,” Mike said. “That’s how bad it is. This is not the work of a professional. This is amateur night.”
“Do a lot of amateurs do tattoo work?”
“They sure as hell shouldn’t,” Mike said.
“You ever lend out your equipment?” Duckworth asked, nodding at the tattoo gun in Mike’s hand.
“God, no way. I’d never—” He stopped himself mid-sentence.
“What?”
“Dolly, when did we have that thing?”
“Thing?”
“That night someone got in here?”
Dolly thought. “That was, like, two weeks ago? I think.”
“You had a break-in?” Duckworth asked.
Mike shrugged and rolled his eyes. “Not exactly. We each thought the other person had locked up, and the back door got left open one night. At first we didn’t think anything had been stolen, but a couple days later I noticed one of the guns and some other stuff was missing. Figured it happened that night.”
“It was my bad,” Dolly said. “I shoulda checked.”
“How hard would it be for someone to work out how to do what you do?”
“Well, if they got the stuff they needed, they could do it,” Mike said. “They just couldn’t do a very good job. I mean, I’m an artist, you know?” He nodded toward the waterfall on the man’s shoulder.
“Sure.”
“You wouldn’t figure a guy who stole some paint and a few brushes could turn out the Mona Lisa, would you?”
Duckworth took another look at the tattoo on the customer’s arm. “No, I wouldn’t.”
“What I don’t get,” Dolly said, “is how you could do something like that without the guy lettin’ ya.”
“’Cause it hurts like a son of a bitch,” offered the man in the chair.
“Did you call the police about the tattoo gun that was stolen?” Duckworth asked.
Mike made a snorting noise. “Honestly, how much effort would the Promise Falls Police have put into that?”
Duckworth nodded, taking his point. He thought about Knight’s and asked, “You got cameras?”
Mike shook his head. “Hell, no. I got a lot of clientele wouldn’t even come in here if they knew they were on video.”
“Like bikers?”
“Bikers? No, I’m talking upstanding leaders of the community, housewives, people like that. People who think they’re too respectable.” He grinned. “They get tatts in some pretty interesting places. Kind of a challenge gettin’ at some of those places, let me tell you.”
Dolly smirked.
“Thanks for your time,” Duckworth said.
As he was heading for the door, the guy in the chair asked, “Who’s the Sean that sick fuck killed?”
“Workin’ on that,” the detective said.
Getting into his car, he thought it interesting that he was the only one who’d thought to ask.
Once behind the wheel, he took out his phone again and called up the picture he’d taken of the van parked in the driveway of Mrs. Beecham’s house. He memorized the plate, then called in to the communications division at the station. A woman answered.
“Shirley?” Duckworth said.
“Yes, it is. That you, Barry?”
“Yeah. I need you to run a plate for me.”
“Barry, when you gonna get one of those computers for your car like the real police have?”
“Are you ready?”
“Fire away.”
He closed his eyes and read off the combination of letters and numbers.
“Hang on,” Shirley said. He could hear her typing in the background. “Okay, got it.”
“Who does it belong to?”
“Van’s registered to a Norma Howton.”
“Spell that last name?”
She did.
“So, not Norma Lastman,” Duckworth said.
“Nope,” Shirley said. “Anything else I can do for you today? Book you a cruise to Tahiti? Order you a pizza?”
“No, that’ll do,” Duckworth said.
Twelve
Cal
“You’re gonna have to buy me a new phone,” Jeremy Pilford told me from the passenger seat.
We were pulling out of the parking lot of the burger place. I glanced in my rear-view to see Jeremy’s girlfriend backing out of her spot in her red Miata, grinding the gears slightly as she did so.
“She’s something,” I said.
“Huh?”
“Charlene. She seems to believe in you.”
“Yeah, well.”
“Been friends a long time?”
“Pretty much forever, I guess.”
“Girlfriend?”
He gave me a pained look. “You already asked me the going-steady question.”
“Which you really didn’t answer.”
“You’re like my mom. You’re all hung up on labels. Is she a girlfriend. She’s a friend. Sometimes we’re closer than at other times.”