Both Randi and the cop were about sixty feet away, easily within range, and Creighton could hear them talking.
“I don’t know,” Randi said. “I think this looks familiar. But it’s hard to tell for sure. It was dark.”
“This is the sixth warehouse we’ve been to.” The cop sounded exasperated. “Look. I gotta go. They need us to sweep through this area for another case and I’m already late. I’ll drop you off at the station.”
“No, I think this might be the one. I’m pretty sure.”
“You think it might be; you’re pretty sure. That’s what you said about the last one. Look, there’s no car here. No phone. Go to the mall, buy yourself a new phone, and just be thankful nothing worse happened to you last night.”
Randi protested one more time, but the cop had already started walking back to his car. She took one final look around the parking lot and then followed him.
Well, it was probably better this way.
But not nearly as much fun.
Just before they climbed into the squad car, Creighton heard the cop say into his radio, “Yeah, this is Officer Brandeiss here.
There’s nothing at the old Lardner Manufacturing place. It checks out. We’re good to go.”
Creighton waited by the door until the two of them had driven away.
So, for whatever reason, the cops were looking into the warehouse district. A tip? Who knows. But now it didn’t matter. Officer Brandeiss had just reported the area clear.
Thanks, Randi, thought Creighton as he went back to see how high the water had risen in the tank. Now no one else will disturb Cassandra and me for the rest of the day
45
The grammatically incorrect and utterly moronic sign outside Dragon’s Tail Tattooing read, “Tattoo’s! Done while you wait.” Tessa just shook her head. She stood for a moment trying to decide if she really wanted to go through with this. Especially here.
Tangy smoke met her at the door. She recognized the smell, and it didn’t come from a cigarette. Harsh, driving music pulsed toward her from inside the studio. One of her favorite bands. DeathNail 13. At least that was cool.
Lien-hua’s words from earlier in the day came back to her: We do what we have to do.
She stepped inside, and a looming greasy-haired guy behind the counter turned down the music and snuffed out what he’d been smoking. He wore a T-shirt that read: “Drunk chicks dig me.” Tessa could hardly believe she was going to trust her arm to someone like this, especially when she saw his eyes crawl across her body, lingering in all the places she would’ve expected a guy wearing his T-shirt to stare.
“Should I buy you a camera?” she asked.
“Huh?”
“To take a picture. That what you want?” She gave him the finger.
“Take a picture of this, jerk.”
Someone shrouded in a pool of shadows in the left-hand corner of the room laughed. She couldn’t make out his face but saw that he was wearing shorts and flip-flops. He lit up a cigarette.
She surveyed the place. Stenciled pictures of tattoo artwork covered every spare inch of the walls. On the right, two open doorways led to the tattoo rooms. Inside each of them, she could see a sink, countertop, needles, and a tattoo machine waiting in the corner.
“So, then,” grumbled the guy behind the counter. “What can I do for you?”
“This is a tattoo parlor, isn’t it?”
“I’m afraid you’re going to need your parents’ permission. Did you bring your mommy with you?”
“My mom is dead.”
A flat silence. “Oh. Sorry.”
“Yeah, right.”
Enough with this guy.
She looked around the dingy, smoky room and saw that the guy in the corner had leaned forward. He looked like he was in his early twenties. Curly, blond, surfer hair. A little soul patch.
Glistening blue eyes.
“The music from before,” she said. “When I came in. Is that what you like? DeathNail 13?”
“Yeah. Their last CD rocked.” He had a cool, breezy, memorable voice.
“Which track did you like best: ‘Terrible Plight’ or ‘Don’t Open Your Eyes’?”
He took a drag from his cigarette. “‘Terrible Plight.’”
“Me too,” she said, then continued by quoting the song’s lyrics,
“‘Currents of pain beneath the golden sky. Just can’t seem to find solid ground.’”
“‘I’m always looking for a place to stand,’” he said. “‘Never finding the promiseland.’ Yeah. That song rocks.”
She tore her eyes off him. It wasn’t easy. “So,” she said to the greasy-haired guy who looked good to drunk girls. “Can you give me a tattoo, or do I have to go somewhere else. I have money.”
“Let’s see it.”
She laid the stack of twenties on the table. He plucked them up, flipped through them.
“Satisfied?”
“Lachlan,” said the surfer guy. “Give the girl a tattoo.”
“I don’t know if it’s enough money. Depends on what she wants.”
“It’s enough.” He took another slow drag. “Give her whatever she wants. You work for me, and I’m tired of paying you to just stand around there doing nothing.”
Lachlan mumbled something in Spanish, reached below the counter, and pulled out a beat-up clipboard with a blank form on it. “So,” he said. “You’re eighteen or older, right? Just say ‘right.’”
“Right.”
“Good.”
“Sign this. It says that if you die from infection you can’t sue us.”
“Oh,” said Tessa. “And does that happen often, then? Dead people suing you?”
The guy in the corner laughed his easy free laugh, and Tessa tossed him a smile. He tipped his cigarette to her, sending a curl of smoke in her direction.
“Just sign it,” said Lachlan.
She jotted down the day’s date, her contact info, and then scribbled an indecipherable name across the bottom of the form. Slid it back to him. Without even looking at it, Lachlan yanked the paper off the clipboard, pulled open a file drawer, and stuffed it inside.
She glanced at the blond guy in the corner. “Thanks.”
“For what?”
“Letting me have whatever I want.”
He seemed to consider her words for a moment. “Don’t mention it. I’m Riker.”
“That your first name or your last name?”
“It’s what people call me. What do they call you?”
She thought fast. She didn’t want to give him her real name.
“Raven.” It felt like a slight betrayal to say it, but she covered her discomfort with a smile. “I like Edgar Allan Poe.”
“Cool. Well, pleasure to meet you, Raven.”
Oh, he was so cute. And twenty at least. And he was flirting with her. She felt a flutter of excitement ride through her and tried to keep it out of her reply. “Pleasure to meet you too, Riker.”
Then he leaned his chair against the wall again.
Lachlan stepped into the first tattoo room and twisted the chair beside the tattoo machine so that it faced Tessa. “So, where do you want it? Let me guess, your ankle? Back? Lotta girls are doing feet these days-”
“My arm.” She rolled up her sleeve.
He stepped to her and pinched her bicep loosely, gazing at it like a farmer might look into the mouth of a horse. “Here, on the bottom of the arm,” he said, “it’s one of the most painful places to get one. One of the most sensitive places on your body.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
His eyes paused on her scar. “That looks pretty recent.”
“Couple months ago.”
“Still hurt?”
“Naw. It’s OK. That’s where I want it.” He was still feeling the skin on her arm. It was starting to creep her out.
“Around the scar?”
“No. Over it.” She pulled her arm away.
“Scars don’t hold color so good.”
She turned to Riker. “Is this guy any good?”
Riker let out a swirl of smoke and leaned forward, bringing his face out of the shadows once again. He really did have gorgeous eyes. “Gotta go to L.A. to find anyone better. Trust me. He’s the real deal. Just ignore the smell, you’ll be fine.”