Skin Deep

by Jerome Preisler

  A few feet away, Catherine had carefully plucked the matted, bloody hair away from the woman’s gunshot wound. Her eyes narrowed. “Ray?”

  He touched the pause button, looked at her.

  “There’s a distinct contusion ring on the back of her head,” she said. “And I see burnt skin around the wound cavity.”

  “She was killed at close range.”

  “Maybe even point-blank.” Like Laurel Whitsen, Catherine thought but did not bother adding aloud. Langston would grasp the implication.

  He rose and went over to the ladder under the cottonwood. Cut twigs and branches littered the ground around it. He brought up his gaze and saw where the tree’s crown had been trimmed. Then he dropped his eyes to the trunk.

  “We know Sato came here to do some work,” he said. “I think we also can be fairly sure of something else. But give me a moment with this evidence.”

  Catherine nodded. She watched him drop some markers around the pole saw, photograph it from several angles to document its position on their arrival at the crime scene, then get his fingerprint kit out of his carrying case and dust the handle for latents. A few partial fingerprints came up, probably Sato’s, deposited before he’d put on the work gloves. There wasn’t much chance they would be useful. Again, though, you assumed at risk of inviting someone with horns and a pitchfork to the dance.

  Langston lifted the prints with tape, transferred them to a backing card, and carefully put the card into an evidence envelope. When he had sealed and put it away, he recovered the saw from the grass and climbed several rungs up the ladder.

  Catherine noted that he’d processed the scene in less than five minutes. It wasn’t too long ago when he would have needed twenty to get through the whole thing. Clumsily.

  “Okay… Sato’s my approximate height,” he said, gripping the handle and extending it over his head so its blade reached the pruned section of the cottonwood. The bark at eye level was spattered with a tarry amalgam of blood and tissue. “He would have been standing on this rung or the next highest when he was shot.”

  Catherine strode over to the ladder. She looked down at where the pole saw had lain relative to it and raised her eyes to the bloodied tree trunk. Sato’s going up to trim the branches and asks his friend to be his spotter. She waits here, right here, holds the ladder for him in case it gets a little shaky or he loses his balance. And then…

  She peered over her shoulder at a dense tangle of trees and coyote brush about five yards from where she stood. “The shooter could’ve been hiding over there,” she said, gesturing at the thicket. “The electric saw’s buzzing away, and neither of them hears him coming close over the racket. Sato doesn’t see him because he has to pay attention to what he’s doing. And the woman doesn’t see him because she’s paying attention to Sato.”

  “So he slips up behind her and fires a shot into her head,” Langston said. “Before Sato can react or possibly even realizes what’s happening…”

  Catherine formed a gun with her thumb and forefinger and aimed it at him. “Bang. The killer does him, too,” she said. “That saw has a safety switch, right?”

  Langston squeezed the bar on its handle. It throbbed noisily to life, its blade vibrating in his hand. After a moment, he released the bar, and it went silent.

  “Sato gets shot, lets go of the saw, and it drops right where we found it,” Catherine said. “He lands in almost the same place, but the killer drags him and his lady friend a few feet away and lays them out alongside each other.”

  “And then he partially skins them,” Langston said, climbing down from the ladder.

  He lowered his eyes to the woman. “It would help to know who she was. Odd she didn’t leave a purse in the car.”

  “You need to get out more often.” Catherine’s lips hinted at a smile. “Women take their purses everywhere. They carry around too many personal items to leave them behind. She would have brought it with her.”

  “Even out here trimming trees?”

  “Everywhere.”

  “Which would mean the shooter either took it with him or disposed of it,” Langston said. “But why didn’t he bother with Sato’s wallet?”

  Catherine shrugged. “He’d have had to fish it out of his pocket. If she had a bag, it would have been easier pickings. He might’ve even heard the dog coming and rushed off before he finished.” A second shrug. “I don’t think he was too worried about their being identified. He’d have known they had to bring their pruning equipment in some sort of vehicle. And that once we found it, we’d trace the owner from the plates and go from there. Snatching their personal ID wouldn’t stall things long.”

  Langston stood there looking thoughtful.

  “What do you bet they had tattoos on their backs?” Catherine said, then saw that he’d reached into his jacket for his palmtop. She watched him rapidly thumb-type something on its touchpad. “You bringing up that e-zine? What was it called?”

  “Flash Ink. I opened a user account last night,” Langston said with an affirmative nod. “I’m browsing the photo gallery of participants in the latest television competition.”

  “The same one Laurel Whitsen was in.”

  “Yes, right.” Langston scrolled and clicked for a while. Then he glanced up at her over his spectacles. “Catherine, come take a look.”

  She walked over and found herself examining a screen image of the victims. Labeled “Daichi and Lynda,” it had been taken from behind and showed them nude from their waists up, turned away from the camera to display the tattoos that had covered their bare backs. They stood side-by-side, holding hands, their hips touching.

  Catherine suddenly felt tired. In life as in death—almost. The object of theft here had not been a purse.

  “The art looks Japanese,” she said, raising an eyebrow as she studied the fine lines and subtle color gradations. “Like ancient woodcuts.”

  “Or panel art.” Langston framed the woman, zoomed in. “The figure on her back is Benzaiten, the folk goddess of love and music. She’s usually depicted as she is here. Near a river playing a biwa… that’s the four-stringed instrument in her arms.”

  Catherine watched as he zoomed in on Sato’s back piece.

  “This is Bishamon, one of the protector gods,” he said. “A bringer of good fortune and guardian against evil.”

  She motioned at the bodies on the ground. “Somebody must’ve caught him napping on the job.”

  Langston took a breath and slowly let the air out. “Flash Ink is owned by a limited-liability corporation in San Diego,” he said. “The contact pages list several e-mail addresses, and I wrote to inform them we have to talk. I also obtained a phone number and left a voice message. But it’s the weekend, and I did all that after midnight.”

  Catherine was nodding her commiseration. At the LVPD forensics lab, where everyone from investigators to techs put in endless hours of unpaid overtime probing, dissecting, and analyzing evidence gathered from crime scenes and corpses, the night shift was a term of convenience, a theoretical construct, a general if highly malleable guideline you followed so you knew if your kids were supposed to be home or at school, or eating breakfast or dinner, or if your husband or wife had gone into absentia due to spousal neglect. It maybe even gave you some vague sense of when to let the cat in—or, more likely, ask a friend to do it. But insofar as the work itself was concerned, the practical drawback of being on a reverse clock from the rest of the world was that you were always ready to make calls when nobody was there to answer and go knocking on doors when the lights were out in the offices behind them.

  Almost a full minute passed as Catherine assembled her thoughts. “That tattoo artist you and Greg went to see, didn’t she say a log-on’s needed to access the magazine’s content?” she said at last.

  Langston nodded. “It has some free public areas, the contestant gallery among them,” he said. “But the short answer is yes. The chat rooms, community boards, and other areas are reserved for paid password acco
unts. And there are different membership tiers.”

  “Based on?”

  “Subscription length, special interests, whether someone wants to view or download videos, essentially what you might expect.”

  She looked at him. “Ray, you know where I’m heading. The magazine would have a user database. With e-mail addresses and credit-card information.”

  “Only to an extent. I opened an account last night using my credit card. Unfortunately, Flash Ink also accepts money orders as a payment option.”

  “That’s unusual for an online service, isn’t it?”

  “Somewhat. But I’ve come to see why individuals at the extremes of body-modification culture might want their information private for personal and legal reasons.”

  Catherine was curious. “Come to see how ?”

  “Through a source,” he said vaguely, seeming a bit uncomfortable with the question. “The law’s spotty for body-modification salons and their customers. People who object to the lifestyle can pressure local governments to hit them with health-code violations I’d consider very much up for interpretation. What’s pertinent is that anyone can buy and send a money order without giving a name or a valid return address.”

  Catherine frowned. His caginess did not exactly delight her, but that issue was for another time and place. “Okay. Let’s see if Archie can come up with any ideas.”

  Langston nodded his agreement. Archie Johnson being their unit’s resident technophile, the CSIs were used to leaning on his computer savvy.

  The wind intensified now, bending and swaying the long, interwoven shadows of the cottonwood’s leafless branches. Catherine saw it rustle Lynda’s hair where it wasn’t glued down with drying blood, shivered, and turned to gaze past the knot of officers around the crime scene. The evidence-collection van and the coroner’s wagon were arriving on an access road. When Dave Phillips was on shift, he would usually beat the CSIs to the scene—though he’d never admit it, it was as if he was in some kind of race with them. Could be he thought his promotion to assistant ME a couple of years back was a prize for it. Who knew?

  But Super Dave was off this morning. And once she gave the techs her instructions, Catherine would be, too, spending what was left of the weekend at home with her daughter. Lindsey had probably grown a couple of inches since they’d last spent a quiet Sunday together. She would also probably want to spend this one with friends rather than an exhausted mom carrying around the image of two dead lovers who had taken gunshot wounds to their heads and had matching tattoos stripped from their backs along with every ounce of meat.

  She huddled into her collar and was still watching the two vehicles wind closer when Brass returned from wherever he’d gone to talk on his cell phone.

  “How’s it going?” he said, putting away the phone.

  Catherine shrugged. “Somebody makes a mess, we sift through it,” she said.

  He studied her wearily. “That was Ecklie who called.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “He asked what we found here.”

  “And when you told him?”

  “He said the mayor and the sheriff’s office will be holding a joint press conference about the Tattoo Man crimes this afternoon.”

  “On a Sunday? Doesn’t he know the media hates paying camera crews double time?”

  “They’re trying to get a jump on the Monday morning news cycle,” Brass said. “And want to send out a message that they’re on the ball twenty-four-seven.”

  “All it does for me is signal panic.”

  “Characterize it however you want,” Brass said. “Ecklie plans to reassure people that the city of Las Vegas is committed to restoring their safety. That residents and tourists should know there’ll be additional manpower watching out for them. And that efforts to apprehend the culprit will be escalated.”

  “Culprit. Singular.”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “And what do you say?”

  “Doesn’t make a difference right now. And it’ll make less after tomorrow.”

  Catherine frowned. “These crimes shouldn’t be bundled together, Jim. You know it. I know it. And my gut feeling’s that Ecklie knows it, too.”

  “I notice you didn’t mention the mayor.”

  “Because the pressure has to be coming from the top. Ecklie’s too smart for this dog and pony show on his own. It can only confuse things.”

  Brass looked at her and rubbed his hands together. “Cold outside,” he said. “Feels like Ash Wednesday was ages ago. Where the hell’s the Easter Bunny hiding his ass?”

  “Does that mean you intend to ignore me?”

  “Not possible,” he said.

  “Then tell me what we’re supposed to do, Jim.”

  Brass gave her a blunt look, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Unconfuse things fast,” he said.

  As he pulled to a halt at his lodge, Bockem noticed the coyote waiting nearby out of the bushes. Squatted on its rear haunches, it had not been at all alarmed by the sound of his approaching station wagon, making no attempt to retreat.

  He stared at the creature through his windshield and reflected in silence, a slight metallic taste rising into his mouth. When he was still very young, four or five at most, his father had begun to school him in life’s hard realities. He recalled the first of his frequent lessons quite clearly. It had been at their Manhattan brownstone when his uncle Gunter came to visit from Europe.

  All fair-haired innocence, Bockem was a contented, sociable child. His mother had lavished him with attention, and her friends, charmed by his outgoing nature, had often traded small gifts and candies for hugs, holding him to their warm bosoms.

  One night before dinner, Bockem had offered to show Uncle Gunter how well he could run across the parlor. That was after Gunter had playfully surprised him after bouncing him in his lap to a children’s rhyme.

  In his mind’s eye, Bockem could picture his uncle as a hefty, smiling man with wisps of thin white hair combed sideways over his mostly bald head. The skin at its crown was pink with spots of brown, and without even knowing he was born eight years before his father, Bockem had somehow recognized those blotches as signs of greater age. Uncle Gunter had spoken in a thickly accented English that the boy found difficult to understand, the half-smoked cigar that was constantly between his lips making it an even greater task. In fact, Bockem had found it easier to decipher his German, since his parents sometimes spoke it when they were alone at home. And an agreeable warmth had come through despite the language barrier.

  He remembered giggling wildly when Uncle Gunter bumped him up and down on his knee while reciting the German rhyme:

  Hoppe hoppe Reiter,

  Wenn er fällt, dann schreit er,

  Fällt er in de Hecken,

  Tut er sich erschrecken.

  Hoppe hoppe Reiter,

  Wenn er fällt, dann schreit er,

  Fällt er auf die Steine,

  Tun ihm weh die Beine.

  Hoppe hoppe Reiter,

  Wenn er fällt, dann schreit er,

  Fällt er in den Graben,

  Fressen ihn die Raben.

  Hoppe hoppe Reiter,

  Wenn er fällt, dann schreit er,

  Fällt er in den Sumpf,

  Dann macht der Reiter… plumps!

  At the rhyme’s conclusion—plumps!—Gunter had abruptly swung Bockem off his lap and across his body with both of his wide, strong hands, the boy’s legs flying horizontally through the air before he was set down standing on the carpet.

  Bockem had let out high squeals of laughter when his uncle tricked him like that. He recalled hearing his mother laughing as well from the hallway, where she’d stood watching. Father, though, had looked just faintly amused, if even that, smiling quietly from his favorite chair against the wall opposite the sofa. He had never been demonstrative with his affection.

  It was after the nursery rhyme ended that Bockem had wanted to show off his running ability. Gunter had asked his father if it w
ould be all right in English, then repeated the question in German as if to make sure it would not be misinterpreted—“Wäre ei in Ordnung?”

  Father had looked steadily at the boy as he gave his conditional approval, saying he could run back and forth between his armchair and the sofa only once—and reminding him to be careful.

  His hands out behind him, Bockem had pushed off from the sofa beside his uncle and darted over to his father, tagging up with his knees, then turning to sprint back across the room.

  He did not immediately realize what had happened when he fell. He only knew that one moment he was running toward his uncle, and the next his feet had flipped up underneath him, and he’d felt a hard shove between his shoulder blades. Then he was sprawled on the parlor floor, his nose and mouth mashed into the carpet.

  Red-faced with embarrassment, Bockem had stood up, gathered himself, then registered his uncle’s dismayed expression and turned to see what he’d stumbled over.

  Still watching Bockem with dispassionate eyes, Father had sat there with his leg stuck straight out, patting it above the ankle to show where he’d tripped him.

  “You should trust no one, Junge,” he said. “And beware of life’s random cruelties.”

  Bockem had not forgotten that lesson. And if ever he’d done so, Father’s many subsequent reminders would have drilled it into him.

  Now he pulled his eyes from the coyote, got out of his vehicle, went around back to open the hatch, and folded back the blanket he’d thrown over the large plastic storage bin in which he’d transported his raw skins from the park. He had laid them out flat in the opaque blue bin, separating them with multiple sheets of waxed paper, then carefully placing another layer of waxed paper on the top skin before the cooling packs went in. Colder than ice, the packs could burn a skin if pressed directly against it, marring its artwork.