Ink

by Jonathan Maberry

  “The Duncans? No,” she said, turning back. “It was kind of weird, though. One minute they’re hugging and crying together, the next they’re nose-to-nose screaming. I had to ask the wife to sit in the waiting room. She was freaking out about the tattoo thing. Kept insisting her husband had it removed, but…”

  “Yeah.”

  The doctor had examined the tattoo and said there were no signs at all of laser surgery to remove it. No scarring. Nothing. The best guess was that it was an inferior tattoo job and the ink faded.

  “And,” Trish continued, “Dr. Argawal suggested a neurological follow-up. The CT scan was negative, so either the husband’s lying or the head injury gave him a moderate dose of traumatic amnesia.”

  “Sure,” said Mike dubiously, “but isn’t it weird that the tattoo fades and he can’t remember having it?”

  Trish gave him a pitying smile. “Mike, honey, this is Pine Deep.”

  It was the answer to anything. In no way a denial that something was weird. Hell, weird was the town’s most abundant crop. The question was always whether it would be good weird or bad weird.

  Mike nodded and watched her walk away, but this time she stopped and came back to him. She wore a strange little smile.

  “You like weird stuff, Mike, right?”

  He shrugged. “Guess I do. Depends on what it is.”

  “That thing with the Duncans? That wasn’t the first time I heard about something like that.”

  “Hitting a cow?”

  “No, the tattoos.”

  “What about the tattoos?” asked Mike.

  “Well,” said Trish, her eyebrows raised, “you remember the homeless man they brought in yesterday suffering from malnutrition and exposure? The one the rangers found near the passion pit?”

  That was the local name for a cleared-out section of woods between the big Guthrie farm and the edge of the state forest, where a drop-off plunged all the way down to the swampy, wormy bottom of Dark Hollow.

  “What about him?”

  “He’s a John Doe. Won’t give his name and didn’t have a wallet. But he said he was a Vietnam vet. Clearly suffering from PTSD,” said Trish, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial level. “He had tattoos everywhere. Two full sleeves, some on his legs, and a whole bunch on his back. But here’s the weird part. He said that he’d lost the tattoos on his chest.”

  “Lost…?”

  “That’s what he said. He insisted that he’d had a bunch of tattoos on his chest. All the best ones, he said. But they’re gone now.”

  The hairs on the back of Mike’s neck stood up. “Gone … how?”

  “That’s just it,” said Trish, an odd light in her eyes, “he has faded blotches all over his chest and stomach, but they weren’t actually tattoos.”

  Mike looked at her. “Like Mr. Duncan?”

  “I guess. I didn’t do the intake on him and only had a quick look when I took his vitals.”

  “He’s still here?”

  “Oh, sure,” she said. “He’ll be here a couple of days. He wouldn’t give us his name or anything. No wallet or ID. Looked like he’d been living wild out there for a while, poor guy. You know how it is with some vets. They went off to fight for the flag and apple pie and all that, but when they got home nobody recognized them anymore. Happened in ’Nam and it’s still happening with the kids coming back from Afghanistan. And the suicide rate is awful. Seventeen to twenty every day.”

  “I know,” said Mike, shaking his head. He looked down the hall. “Say, what room’s the John Doe in?”

  “Three thirty-one. The one on the corner with the glass wall. We put him there to keep an eye on him, you know?”

  Monk chewed his lip for a moment. “Can I talk to him?”

  “About the tattoos?”

  “About whatever he wants to talk about,” said Mike.

  She nodded. “I guess. You’ll need to clear it with the attending.”

  “Argawal?”

  “Yes. He’s working a double.”

  “Thanks, Trish.”

  She lingered for a moment. “I mean … it is weird, right? Duncan and then the vet, both saying they’re missing tattoos…”

  “Yeah,” said Mike slowly, “it’s definitely weird.”

  43

  Dianna Agbala stepped out onto her porch and looked up and down the street.

  Ten thousand birds were singing in the trees, most of them hidden by rioting autumn leaves. The sound made her smile.

  She wore an oversize sweater that hung nearly to the knees of her black tights. It was ugly, but it was thick and warm and an old friend. Her dark hair was still up in a lazy bun and she wore no makeup. Her shift at the store didn’t start until that afternoon and there was nothing at all on her schedule until then. She needed the downtime, too, because yesterday was such a freaky day. Losing nearly an hour and forgetting nearly every detail about a customer worried her. Ophelia had tried to laugh it off, but it wasn’t funny. It was scary. Dementia ran in her family, and although her mother and grandfather each got it in their seventies and she was only halfway there, the thought was terrifying. To lose one’s mind? To have memories carved out of one’s mind and discarded forever was obscene.

  She sat down on the rocker and pulled the sweater tight.

  People don’t just lose an hour of their day. Sure, maybe after a concussion or some kind of bad shock, but not during an ordinary workday. Dianna had spent a lot of time last night thinking it through. She was too weirded out to go deep on the subject with Ophelia. First, Ophelia was her boss and second, they were friendly, but not true confidants. And this felt confidential. She wanted to talk with someone, to get out of her own thoughts, but … who?

  The name Val Guthrie-Crow floated into her mind. Val was a friend, but mostly she was a customer. A semi-regular who came in for readings when the store was likely to be empty or slow. Val ran the biggest farm in town, was married to the chief of police and the adoptive mother of the senior patrol officer, Mike. By every Pine Deep metric she was solid, normal, practical, and grounded. And yet, Dianna knew Val had a spiritual side. Where once she’d been strictly Christian, since the Trouble Val had become more open-minded, and to a surprising number of things. Everything from energy portals in the forest to ghosts. And that was a crucial thing for Val: reinforcing her belief that death was not the end, but merely a doorway. Val and her husband had lost two of their four children. The youngest two. A brain tumor had taken the youngest before his first birthday, and the little girl had been consumed by leukemia ten months later. Not recent deaths, but the distance between that kind of loss and any true healing was measured in light-years.

  Dianna was not a channeler, and was not able to actually speak to the spirits of the dead children … but she could feel them. She caught glimpses of them surrounded by light. When Dianna was down very deep in the middle of a reading for Val, she sometimes saw the two little tattoos that were hidden on Val’s chest—a ladybug and a lightning bug—glow with golden fire. They were the symbols of the little ones, and Val never showed them to anyone. Val was a modest woman who usually wore T-shirts under her work shirts. No cleavage, no tattoos. Only her husband ever saw them.

  Would Val be open to a conversation about losing an hour of time? Or would she measure that against what she’d lost and turn away? Dianna had a lot of respect for Val, but grief warped everything.

  A big crow came and landed on the far end of the porch rail. She recognized her as one of the mated pair who lived in the oak tree separating Dianna’s yard from her neighbor, Mrs. Sandoval. The bird was old, though, and her feathers bedraggled by age and last night’s storm. The bird cocked her head and cawed very softly.

  And just that fast Dianna had a flash image in her mind. Not of Val, or Ophelia, or anyone else she knew. The image was of a very pretty woman about her own age, with long dark hair. A woman with a lovely face but haunted eyes. Trying on five-pocket skinny jeans in a stretch fabric with back yoke stitching, at Get Real.
>
  Dianna smiled at the unbidden memory. She’d complimented the stranger on the way those jeans fit. A bold move on her part, because her comment had been phrased and inflected to be flirty and the woman had a wedding ring. Not that a ring made her straight, but she had the look of straight. Like she belonged to the PTA, went to church on Sundays, threw parties for everyone’s birthday, knew how to make every kind of cocktail at home, and had a husband who didn’t know whom he was sharing a life with. A lot of assumptions, sure, but Dianna was, after all, a psychic. Said so in neon at the store.

  Why had she said something to the woman trying on the jeans? Gaydar was mostly a myth, especially with all of the many, many ways in which sexuality manifested. Usually gaydar was good for spotting the more deliberately dramatic queers. The ones who want to be spotted easily and accepted on their own terms. But, truthfully, there wasn’t a “gay look.” There wasn’t even always a vibe.

  Unless, of course, you were psychic.

  Dianna smiled at the thought.

  Had the woman bought those jeans? And, if so, could Jennifer at Get Real be convinced to share that information? Dianna looked at the lady crow, who bobbed her head as if nodding encouragement.

  “Nice,” she said aloud and decided to stop at the clothing shop and ask. The decision felt good. Felt right. The day even contrived to look a bit brighter.

  44

  Monk got them both to the ER.

  He had a bloody towel wrapped around his hand where her needle had stabbed him. The pain was bad, but his heart hurt worse.

  Patty said nothing on the way. Not a word. She could not look at Monk, or at his hand. She couldn’t look at her own hand. Her right hand was balled into a fist and every now and then she pounded it down on the top of her thigh. After the eighth or tenth time, Monk laid his palm on her leg, as much in the path of the blow as his other hand had been in the path of the needle.

  It stopped her.

  For the rest of the ride, and for the forty minutes they sat together in the waiting room, she looked away until the nurse came for her.

  They were going to take Monk first because of the bloody towel, but then the nurse got a closer look at Patty’s face. A moment later Patty was gone, whisked away by staff who kept throwing suspicious looks back at Monk. He tried to go with her, but they wouldn’t allow it, and Monk knew better than to try and claim he was her husband.

  So he sat down and waited.

  A half hour crawled by, leaving shells of each long minute on the floor. During that time a cop came and looked at him from across the waiting room. Didn’t say anything to Monk, but he spoke quietly to the intake nurse. Then the cop disappeared from sight, but Monk could feel him somewhere, maybe watching on a monitor.

  Shit, thought Monk. He knew where this was heading.

  45

  Mike Sweeney watched the old Vietnam veteran through the big picture window. He’d told the nurses that his name was Joey Raynor, but he had no ID to back it up. No address, no social security card. Nothing. Mike ran the name through the system and got lot of hits for different Joseph Raynors, including more than thirty in the Philadelphia metropolitan area and seventeen in Bucks County. None of them came back as missing persons, though. Mike called Gertie to have her run a request through military channels, including the VA.

  While he waited for that information, Mike watched Mr. Raynor sleep. He could always tell when someone was really sleeping or faking it. This guy was way down deep. Maybe so far down that he wasn’t able to dream the kind of dreams that had driven him out of his life and into the woods. Mike hoped so,

  Last thing he was going to do was wake the poor bastard up.

  So he turned and walked away.

  Then he stopped halfway to the stairwell and walked back. Something had registered on the outside edge of his awareness. Something off about the room. He opened the door very quietly and took a single step into the room.

  He mouthed the words What the hell but didn’t say them aloud.

  Raynor shuddered in his sleep, like a dog dreaming of hunting. Or a rabbit dreaming of being hunted. But that wasn’t what had brought Mike back.

  It was the flies.

  There were five of them. Big, bloated ones. Dark as bruises. Ugly. The homeless vet lay on his side, with the ties of his gown askew, the flaps open to reveal the ornate landscape of interlocking tattoos on his back. The flies were crawling over them. Mike edged forward and saw the little bastards licking at the man’s skin.

  Doing what? Tasting his sweat? Feeding off of something the poor bastard rolled in or slept on down in Dark Hollow? The flies kept crawling and licking, licking and crawling. It turned Mike’s stomach. He wanted to swat them, smash them, squash them. But he did not want to wake the patient.

  Instead he stood there, watching. Appalled and fascinated at the same time.

  46

  The ER was mostly empty except for an old woman who sat hunched over her many years, eyes staring at nothing, lips moving as if in conversation but she made no sound. An orderly came to help her into a wheelchair.

  Monk sat alone for another few minutes, then a male nurse came to fetch him. On the way to the examination bay, Monk tried to spot Patty, but all of the curtains were drawn.

  “I need to get your blood pressure,” said the nurse. He was a soft, doughy guy somewhere in his thirties, but aging badly. Unhealthy complexion, watery-blue eyes, and a hypertensive flush on his cheeks like he’d run up four flights of stairs. The exact opposite of what you’d want in a medical professional. He looked like he should be having his own vitals taken. The name stitched on the pocket of his scrubs was O. Mäsiarka. Monk thought it should have been something like I. Schlub. The nurse held up the sphygmomanometer. “Mind removing your jacket?”

  “I’m licensed to carry and am wearing a gun in a shoulder rig,” said Monk. While the nurse sorted out how to respond to that, Monk fished the laminated card from his wallet and held it up, watching the nurse’s lips form the words licensed bail bondsman and fugitive recovery agent.

  Mäsiarka cleared his throat, and after a considerable pause asked aloud in an awed voice, “You’re a bounty hunter?”

  Monk put the card away and didn’t answer.

  “Like that guy on TV? Dog?”

  Monk sighed.

  “You here looking for someone?”

  “I’m here because my hand’s bleeding all over the goddamn place, pal,” growled Monk, “so can we put some topspin on this?”

  “Um … sure, sure, right. Sorry. Okay. Let’s get those vitals. Still need you to remove that jacket.”

  “Sure,” said Monk, resisting the urge to sigh again. No matter who was there when he showed more of his body there was going to be some variation of the same set of interlocked reactions. He watched the nurse’s eyes when he slid out of the jacket. They damn near popped out of their sockets. Not because of the gun in the shoulder holster, but because of the tattoos visible on his arms and shoulders and chest. Everywhere the tank top didn’t cover. All those pale faces. Most of them were photo-real, as if his skin were a window they looked out of. Others were more stylized and clearly done by different artists. In every case, though, the eyes looked real. They watched, and people could feel them watching. Certain kinds of people anyway.

  “Nice ink,” said Mäsiarka, but his voice nearly cracked saying it.

  Monk said nothing, and the nurse finally busied himself taking his blood pressure, temperature, and also listened to Monk’s heart with a stethoscope. He entered the numbers on a computer that swung out from the wall on a metal arm. Then he cleared his throat again and tried to sound conversational. “I got a couple tats. A devil I got in college. Frat thing … you know how that is. And others I got in Arizona when I went to visit the Grand Canyon. Other places, too. Some people get bumper stickers, I get ink.” Like a lot of nurses he wore a long-sleeved Henley under his scrubs and didn’t offer to show the tattoos to Monk. Which was good, because Monk truly could not have cared
less. He also disliked the man for calling them “tats” instead of tattoos.

  The nurse gave up trying to be social and lapsed into asking the usual medical history questions—health insurance, address, age, weight, if he was on any meds. Monk’s answers were short, accurate, and left no conversational door open. The nurse typed it all into the computer, then went away, saying the doctor would be in to see him. Monk managed to forget Mäsiarka almost at once.

  Instead he thought about what must be going on in Patty’s head. How much does a person have to drink to forget their child? Especially after what happened to the little girl. And with that sweet face tattooed on her own hand. That math made no sense to him and there was no scenario he could build that offered a framework of probability.

  “Come on, Pats,” he said softly, “it’s Tuyet. Come on, now…”

  The triage bay was silent around him and he conjured no answers.

  Fifteen minutes later a slim figure materialized outside of the bay.

  “Mr. Addison?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m Dr. Argawal.” He looked like he was ten years old and was clearly right out of medical school. Mild Mumbai accent overlaid with the nasal tones of Philadelphia. He flashed a bright smile that showed none of the erosion that would sand the edges off it if he worked that gig for much longer. The smile flickered as he came around and saw the gun, but he made no comment. Clearly Mäsiarka had mentioned it, and was likely sharing the news with the police stationed at the hospital. There would be drama. But not from the doctor, who kept everything in neutral.

  Monk nodded but said nothing.

  The doctor’s eyes kept flicking to the faces on Monk’s arms and shoulders. He so wanted to ask questions, but wasn’t yet that kind of person. Monk watched him trying not to look as Argawal put on a pair of pale-blue plastic nitrile gloves.

  “Let’s see what’s what,” said the doctor as he peeled away the bloody towel. The puncture had stopped bleeding but Monk’s whole hand was puffed and red and looked like it felt.