by Blake Pierce
“Start with that one on your hand,” Zoe said, pointing to a trio of dots placed as if at the corners of a triangle.
“Mi vida loca,” Diaz said. “Means I’m a criminal. First one I ever got.”
“There, on your arm,” Zoe said, pointing to a design that took up most of his right forearm. A skeleton wearing the robes of a nun, with bony fingers pressed together as if in prayer, a rosary dangling from them.
“Santa Muerta. She protects me.”
Zoe raised an eyebrow. She did not feel the need to point out that she was not perhaps doing a good job, since here Diaz was, sitting opposite an FBI agent and about to go back into prison. “And the face of the devil, above her?”
Diaz smirked. “It’s the face of the devil. You need me to translate that one for you?”
Zoe pointed wordlessly to the face next to the devil, an evil-looking jester with an overexaggerated red nose and lips, harlequin diamonds on his sleeve and hat. He was lifting a finger as if in warning.
“Means I have no fear,” Diaz said. He was almost grinning now. Pride in his tattoos and what they meant was clear. “And the letters are the initials of my gang. My family. So everyone knows my affiliation, get it?”
Zoe nodded. “What is that around your neck?” A chain seemed to begin there, large black circles with thin lines between them, but it disappeared out of sight.
“Rosary for protection. It finishes over my heart,” Diaz said, patting his chest.
Zoe was beginning to see that these tattoos were more than just scribbles, destruction of the body. They were meaningful. A whole code, written on the body for anyone to read. Telling people that Diaz was a fearless and violent man, willing to break the law for his gang, maybe even kill. But also that he was a man who believed in God, thought he could get protection by praying to the right saints, even despite his sins.
She needed to know more. The more she knew of these patterns and codes, the easier she could read them in the future. “What about on your left arm, the cards?”
Diaz twisted his arm slightly to bring the tattoo fully to face the front, looking down on it himself: four cards splayed out, all clubs. An ace, king, queen, and jack. “Clubs mean criminal, and it means that’s how I see life. Like a gamble. Might as well roll the dice.”
Zoe peered closer, looking at the cards. “There, on the king,” she said.
As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Diaz put his arm back, even rolling his shoulders to turn the king away from her view. His own mouth set into a firm, straight line, and his eyes went stony blank. “I ain’t talking no more,” he said.
Zoe tilted her head, looking at him for a moment. That was curious—very curious indeed.
She gathered her folder and got up, walking out of the room without a backward glance. Shelley followed her, leaving their former suspect alone in silence. Even if he wasn’t a killer in this particular case, he was still a criminal. Likely still a murderer, in the service of his gang. Zoe didn’t need to ask about the two teardrops on his face to know what they signified in prison culture.
“What was that about?” Shelley asked, as soon as the door was closed behind them and Diaz had no chance of hearing.
“There was a number on the card,” Zoe said. “A thirteen. It was hidden in the scrollwork around the club. I thought at first it simply signified the king’s value within the deck, but his reaction makes me think otherwise.”
“A hidden number…” Shelley trailed off, then opened her eyes wide in recognition. “Indicating affiliation. MS-13, maybe?”
Zoe waved her off. All of that was pointless now. If Cesar Diaz was connected to a more serious and deadly gang than was first suspected, maybe a double agent infiltrating the smaller gang or perhaps working as a go-between to secure deals between them, then it was something for the officers who took up his case to look into. He was no longer their suspect, and it no longer mattered what was going on in his life.
But something else was tugging at her mind. The idea of secret messages, symbolism, and hidden numbers. Both of their victims had had tattoos. What if there was something hidden within them, something that would give them more of a clue?
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Shelley left off from the line of the paperwork she was filling in and looked up at Zoe. As usual, Zoe was in her own world, completely oblivious to everything going on around her. She likely hadn’t even noticed that they needed to fill in the paperwork for Diaz’s arrest and subsequent handover to the local cops, so Shelley had taken it upon herself to make sure that it was done.
As she carefully filled out the pages upon pages that needed to be documented, in order to ensure there was no legal loophole for his lawyers to exploit later, Shelley kept half an eye on Zoe. Her behavior was verging on the manic, and it was starting to become a cause for concern. She was running back and forth to the printer, laying out pictures of tattoos taken from the social media accounts of the two victims, poring over them in close detail.
Cesar Diaz had been a bust, but now Zoe was focused in on this element of the tattoos and didn’t seem to want to move away from it. She was acting like an obsessive, looking through page after page of social media posts on both of their accounts, cross-checking with the accounts of tattoo artists, getting every angle she could of each piece of inked art. It was as though she was trying to work out the code within them, to find out which gang they were affiliated with or what secret crimes the tattoos were a confession to.
“Hey, Z,” Shelley said, trying to choose her words carefully, keeping her tone light and casual. “You know that tattoos are sometimes just… tattoos, right? Like you were saying before. They can be just meaningless. A piece of art the person liked, and nothing more.”
“Hmm,” Zoe said.
Shelley waited, but that was the only response. She was going to have to try harder if she wanted to pull her off this course—and toward something, anything, that might help them investigate. “We should be looking at anyone who knew both John and Clay. See if there’s anyone with a grudge that never got cleared up. Friends, even family members. Members of Clay’s gang. Even if it has nothing to do with Cesar, it could still be connected to the dealing.”
“It could be,” Zoe agreed, barely looking up from her latest printouts. “What do you think this rose means?”
Shelley hesitated. She didn’t want to encourage this line of investigation, but then again, Zoe was the senior agent. She was supposed to know best, wasn’t she? She could well be onto something. When Shelley had doubted her in the past, she had managed to pull it together and find something real.
But she didn’t get tattoos. She didn’t understand that they were a social trend, that people loved getting them just for the sake of it—and not just criminals. That they were mainstream now.
Perhaps the best thing to do would be to explain as much as she could about what she knew, and let Zoe work her own way around to understanding that it really meant nothing that the victims both had ink.
“It usually means remembrance, I suppose,” Shelley said. “People get them after a loved one dies. Usually a grandparent, a mother, an aunt, or so on. But then people just get roses, you know? They’re pretty. If you’re a girl, and you want a tattoo, they look nice enough.”
“What about this tiger?” Zoe said, moving on without comment on Shelley’s explanation, holding up a printout of John Dowling’s bicep tattoo. “It is not a Western representation, is it? More Asian, it looks to me.”
Shelley bit her lip, and then her tongue. She tried to remember the strategy she had decided upon only moments before instead of losing her patience. “Quite possibly Japanese in origin. There’s a lot of respect for classic Asian tattoos. Traditional Japanese styles have made a big comeback, as well as some traditional methods.”
“But what does it mean?” Zoe pressed.
Shelley tried to cast her mind back over what she knew, which admittedly was not very much. She was hardly a tattoo expert herself, even if
she was much more knowledgeable than Zoe was in this area. “Strength and protection, I think. A lot of traditional tattoos have those kinds of connotations. Protection, luck, wealth, health, memory.”
“And these traditional meanings are gaining again in popularity.”
So, at least Zoe really was listening. “That’s right. I don’t know if it means that everyone really understands what they’re getting tattooed. Like I said, sometimes it’s just about what looks good. Seeing a tattoo you like on an artist’s social media and getting them to tattoo it on you.”
Zoe looked up at this, her interest fully piqued. “So, it is the tattooist who comes up with the design?”
“Most of the time, yes.”
“What about yours? It had personal meaning.”
Shelley nodded. There were times when she felt like Zoe was trying to trap her in a logic puzzle, prove herself right by outsmarting her. “Yes, but I’m not an artist. I came to the tattoo artist and told her what I wanted in a consultation. She found a photograph of a poppy and we agreed on it being a good design, and on size and placement, and then she tattooed it. But she did photorealism. Most artists have their own particular style. It can be more about the art style than the specific meaning or symbolism of the tattoo. Like collecting paintings from a painter you like—most artists will only ever do the same tattoo once, to keep it unique.”
Zoe was frowning, looking up at the corner of the ceiling as if picturing it. “Even those who do lettering or, how did you put it? Traditional styles?”
“Well, you’re not seeing the full picture. Even with traditional styles, you can make lots of variations on the same style. Lettering is less unique, I suppose, but it depends on what the client wants. And I guess there are always those awful tattoo parlors where you can get a crappy, generic design tattooed with poor skill. But our victims had good tattoos. Good artists.”
Zoe looked at the images again. “That is interesting. So they have that connection as well. Not just tattoos, but good tattoos. Style and taste, and expenditure.”
This wasn’t going the way Shelley had wanted it to. Zoe seemed to be getting more interested, not less.
“That’s just a consequence of the trend for mainstream tattoos,” Shelley tried. “As they become more popular, it becomes more prestigious to go to a better artist. It’s all about social media, being able to share this artwork on your skin, gaining followers and popularity if you have good tattoos. There are even—well, how can I put this? Models, I suppose, who gain a large following of mostly male users, who appreciate the look of their tattoos.”
“You mean nude modeling,” Zoe said, matter-of-factly. Even if she was disconnected from social niceties and trends a lot of the time, at least it wasn’t an indication of prudishness. “Do you think Callie was involved in that?”
“Well, no, I don’t mean that all women with tattoos… and, you know, we already looked at her social media.” Shelley scratched the skin above her left eyebrow, trying to find a way back out of this conversation. Zoe was getting deeper and deeper, drawing conclusions that didn’t need to be drawn, making leaps of logic. “Should we maybe look into other avenues, not just the tattoo connection?”
Zoe glanced up. “Oh, yes. You go ahead. I will continue studying these.”
Just like that, her attention was gone again. Shelley lingered, chewing on one of her fingernails above the unfinished paperwork as she watched her partner go deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole.
She knew that Zoe was in therapy. That had not been a secret between them. Watching her now, Shelley couldn’t help but wonder if it was working.
Zoe was getting obsessive, and that was never a good thing. If she stayed blinkered, she would miss key clues—clues that maybe only she could see. Shelley considered herself a good agent, but she knew she couldn’t hold a flame to Zoe’s years of experience and special way of seeing things.
If she couldn’t find a way to get her partner back on track, they risked letting a killer get away—or even losing more victims to their lit match before the case was done.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The watcher lounged on a table at the café over the road from the store, watching and waiting. He was close by the door, and his bill was paid already. As soon as she finished her shift and emerged into the growing twilight, she would be in his grasp.
It was getting late, the moon no match for the lights of the city but trying all the same. There was little foot traffic here at this time of night. Most of the workers in the city had already traversed rush hour to get home, and the few that were still out and about were slowly finishing their tasks and getting back indoors.
She would walk home, as she always did. There were streetlights all along her route, enough to make her feel safe and secure as she passed by side roads and alleys on the way home. The road continued alongside her path, cars filled with drivers and passengers to serve as witnesses.
But they would not see him. He knew they wouldn’t. He had it all planned out.
He knew he could stay ahead of her. She walked slowly, the stroll of someone who was done for the day and dead tired to boot. There was one bend in particular, a dip where the sidewalk plunged into darkness between two lights—one bulb no longer working. A place where the road was less busy. Where cars did not pass by as often, and if they did, their drivers would be looking up at the intersection ahead, assessing whether they would have to stop at the lights.
No one would see her there. No one would notice a dark shape in the dark city, being pulled deep into an alleyway. He would do it with a gloved hand over her mouth. She wouldn’t scream. He would cut her throat and drag her deeper, and light her up right there, and be gone before anyone knew that something was wrong.
He smiled to himself, thinking about it. Not the act itself; he knew that was a terrible thing. But the world would be safer with her gone, and that was what truly mattered. Protection. Safety.
All the residents of this sleepy street, going about the last of their business for the day—none of them knew what he was doing for them.
He got up and left the café, too impatient to wait any longer. He needed to be on the move, working, getting closer to his goal. He needed to be getting started.
He crossed the street casually, as if he had all of the time in the world. It was a risk, but not really. Hiding in plain sight was the best possible strategy. So what if he was seen on the same street as her? It meant nothing. Most of the people around would not even notice him, let alone be able to identify him later. People were like that. They went about their lives just about asleep, noticing nothing of any real importance.
The back door of the store opened, the front one already locked up. This was it. She was coming out.
And who was that?
He tried not to stare, tried to switch his gaze carefully and quickly to the sidewalk, to where he was walking. He continued on down the sidewalk in the direction of her house, the way he had already been intending to walk, but this time he was not going to an alleyway to lie in wait for her. No, this time he was walking in front of her, past her, because she had stopped—and she was not alone.
A coworker had left the store at the same time, which was irregular. Normally she locked up alone. This man must have stayed.
Likely, he was trying to impress her. To seduce her. Playing out the animal and tiresome role of the mating beast, interested in nothing but pleasure and the moment.
Thinking nothing of the evil that could be unleashed on the world, of the people like her. People who needed to be wiped out to keep everyone else safe.
Worst of all was what he had glimpsed before he turned away and continued his walk, his unhurried stride turning into more of a rush. If he had thought to dress for sports, he might have turned it into a job. Something that no one would remark on. But if you were dressed in normal clothing, dark clothing, and you broke into a run, that was something that people remembered. That they could be called upon for witness statements o
f earlier. And it was a shame, because what he needed most of all now was to run.
Because what he had seen were car keys, and a car parked at the back of the store waiting for them. The coworker was giving her a ride home.
He gritted his teeth, his mind racing. How would he get there before them now? He wouldn’t; he couldn’t. Only if he had a vehicle of his own, and that had not been in his plan for today. His plan had been simply to use the power of his feet, to get into a place where he could wait for her, to be ready.
Not to try and outpace a car.
But this was the city, and even if the traffic was lighter at this time of the evening, there were still blockages in their way. Red lights and stop signs and, maybe if he was lucky, a spot of lingering congestion. Earlier he had hoped for the roads to be empty. Now he prayed that they were full.
He walked as quickly as he could bear without arousing suspicion, taking on the guise of a man with a place to be, wanting to get home or meet a date or something of that ilk. He was still on the same route, still rushing ahead, when the car passed him. He saw her clearly as the car paused at an intersection. Her head in silhouette, recognizable to him as his own mother’s. He had been studying her closely enough, these past days.
She was past him, and then gone further up the street, and now he was the one who was behind and rushing to catch up.
He ground his teeth in frustration, feeling the pull and pop of the muscles in his jaw, the irritation. Now it was all up in the air. He would have to take a bigger risk, move without the safety of a plan. Of course, there was always a backup plan. But it was nothing to the real plan.
Still, what could he do? He had set out to do this tonight, and he couldn’t bear to wait any longer. It had to be done tonight. He could not manage another day of watching her from afar, wishing she was already dead. The way she deserved to be.
He clenched his fists, feeling the squeak and squeeze of his leather gloves, the way the material moved around his hands. So be it. He was up for a challenge, wasn’t he? Never let it be said that a change of plans put him off from carrying out his most righteous work.