She walked inside and found a public bulletin board. There were no ads for lost cats, so she posted the last flyer and crossed her fingers. She went to the café and found a seat at a table with partial shade that overlooked the pool, and ordered a chicken-salad sandwich with fries. She saw Sissy Talmadge, Peter’s nearest neighbor, having lunch with someone. Carlotta waved, but when Sissy’s companion turned around and Carlotta saw it was Bebe Plank, her hand froze midflutter.
Bebe turned back and the women were instantly involved again in deep conversation over their martinis—no doubt about her. Carlotta dropped her hand. She was starting to regret her decision to infiltrate the upper ranks. She wondered if Tracey could have her banned from the community center, too.
Her food was delivered quickly and while she ate, she enjoyed the summer scene that was worlds away from the ugliness of The Charmed Killer. From the pool, screams of children’s laughter rode the air. In the distance, sprinklers fanned back and forth over green, green lawns. The air was thick with the smell of fresh-cut grass.
A wave of nostalgia washed over her. This was how she’d spent her childhood. A happy cocoon of summer camp, tennis practice and endless birthday parties. If she married Peter, this was how their children would grow up. Carefree summers…private school…the best of everything.
The thought had slipped into her head, catching her unawares. Did Peter even want children? Did she?
“A penny for your thoughts.”
She looked up just as Jack settled into the empty seat across from her. In his dark suit and tie, he stuck out like a sore thumb. And he had the eye of every female in the vicinity.
“How did you know I was here?” she asked with a frown.
He snagged a fry from her plate. “I followed the trail of flyers, and I saw your Pinkie Tuscadero scooter parked out front.”
“You just happened to be in the area, Jack, or do you live around here?”
“Neither. Is your phone dead?”
“Yes.”
He pulled out his cell and punched in a number. When her phone started ringing inside her bag, he snapped his shut. “Liar, liar, pants on fire.”
She rolled her eyes. “So I’m not answering my phone.”
He chewed the fry, then snagged another one. “I was worried. When you didn’t answer last night, I thought you might have been kidnapped.”
“By Peter?”
“It’s called the Stockholm syndrome, where you become brainwashed by your captor.”
She leaned forward. “Jack, if you’re jealous, just say so.”
“Of Ashford? Please. The guy is rich and works in a nice air-conditioned office all day while I grub around in a cubicle and get shot at. What’s to be jealous of?”
“Me?” she asked, angling her head.
He looked under the table and frowned at her shorts. “I thought you’d at least be wearing a bikini.”
She sighed. “Sorry to disappoint you. I came for lunch. Do you want something?”
He gestured to the half of the sandwich she hadn’t eaten. “Are you through? If so, I’ll just finish this.”
“Knock yourself out. Any updates on Michael?”
He flagged the waiter and asked for a soda, then tore into the sandwich. “The sighting in Athens was bogus. We’re back to square one. Can you think of anyplace he might be, or what he might be doing?”
“With ten thousand dollars, he’s probably shopping,” she said wryly. “Michael had an affinity for things he couldn’t afford…which probably explains why he started stealing people’s identities to begin with.”
“It’s something,” he said. “I’ll have uniforms recirculate Lane’s photo to all the shop owners at Lenox Square and Phipps Plaza.”
“Did you hear I failed the polygraph?”
He nodded and grinned. “So you thought about me during the test, huh?”
“No.” She tossed her napkin at him. “Maria wouldn’t tell me which questions I failed.”
He frowned. “Let’s just say you weren’t forthcoming about the men in your life.”
Meaning Jack and Randolph. She shifted in her seat. “Does this mean the state guys are going to bring me back in for questioning?”
“I don’t know. Nobody will tell me anything.”
“Not even Marquez?”
“Not even her.”
She pressed her lips together. “Jack, I’m sorry if they took you off the case because of me.”
He shrugged his big shoulders. “Doesn’t matter. Those guys would’ve found another reason to take me off the case. Happens all the time. Big case like this, they want to run the investigation.”
“Do you think they’ll solve it?”
The waiter set the soda in front of Jack and he took a deep drink before answering. “Eventually.”
“But?”
“But bureaucracy is slow. And sometimes when the state and federal agencies step in, the perp escalates.”
“Because the case is more high profile?”
He nodded. “All serial killers are egomaniacs at heart.”
She looked away. Randolph certainly was an egomaniac.
“So…are you going to tell me why you’ve been avoiding my calls?”
She looked back and found Jack studying her. She considered telling him about the connection Peter had made between her father and Alicia Sills. But even if Jack wasn’t officially on the case, he’d be honor-bound to share that tidbit with the state agents.
Before she could manufacture a response, her cell phone rang. She pulled it out and saw Wesley’s name on the caller ID. “It’s Wes, I should get it.”
Jack nodded and tackled the rest of the sandwich.
She connected the call. “Wesley? What’s up?”
“Thought you might want to know—there’s another victim of The Charmed Killer.”
She reached forward to touch Jack’s arm. “Another victim? Where? When?”
Jack’s expression hardened.
“It was a run I made yesterday with Kendall in College Park. The M.E. thought the woman had passed out and suffocated, but the charm was found in her stomach during the autopsy.”
“She’d swallowed it?”
What kind? Jack mouthed.
“What kind of charm was it?”
“Kendall said it looked like a keg, or maybe a barrel.”
“A keg or a barrel.”
Jack took out his pen and wrote on a napkin. NAME?
“Wesley, do you remember the victim’s name?”
“Alderman was the last name, I don’t remember the first name.”
“Last name Alderman,” she repeated, and Jack wrote it down.
“She was a middle-school teacher,” Wesley offered. “Her teenage son found her at home.”
She made a mournful noise. The situation must’ve affected Wesley if he was bringing it up. He sounded different. Yesterday he had slurred his words, but today he sounded antsy, and a little out of breath.
Jack wrote ADDRESS?
“Do you remember the street address?”
“Yeah—it was Rever, or Revere, one or the other.”
“Rever or Revere.”
“Are you with somebody?” Wesley asked.
Since Jack wasn’t supposed to be on the case, she decided it was best not to say anything. “No…just me. I’m keeping track of as many details as possible.”
Jack indicated that was all he needed for now.
“Thanks for the heads-up,” she said. “Let me know if you hear anything else.”
“Sure thing. Tell Jack hello for me.”
She frowned into the phone and disconnected the call. “He said they picked up the body yesterday. It looked as if the woman had passed out and suffocated, but the charm was found during the autopsy.”
“That’s different,” Jack said. “It means she was alive when he put it in her mouth, poor thing.”
Jack flagged the waiter for the bill, then handed him cash and pushed to his feet. “Come on, I
’ll follow you back to Ashford’s.”
She gave him a wry smile. “Yes, I’m ready to leave, thank you for asking.”
Jack gave her a pointed look. “And Carlotta—whatever you’re keeping from me? Eventually I’ll find out.”
She wet her lips, thinking how secretive Jack could be when it came to personal details. “Right back at you, Jack.”
22
“I’m nervous, dude. What if she doesn’t like me?”
Wesley pulled his thoughts away from his own problems and turned his head to look at Chance, who was holding the steering wheel of the BMW like a driver’s ed student.
“Relax, man. Hannah can’t stand you. Which means you can only improve in her eyes.”
Chance pursed his mouth and nodded. “I never thought about it like that.”
“Besides, how can she resist the shirt?”
Chance smoothed a hand over his All This and a Big Dick, Too T-shirt and grinned. “You’re right.”
Wesley shook his head and looked back to the road. “There’s the tattoo parlor on the left. And that’s Hannah’s van in the parking lot.” They watched as Hannah, tall and solid and wearing more leather than a cow, emerged from the van.
“Just look at her,” Chance said in awe. “I’m already sporting wood.”
“Down, boy. You’re going to have to work for this one.”
Chance’s chest puffed up. “I’m the man for the job.”
Wes smothered a smile. This ought to be good.
Chance parked the car next to the van and they got out.
Hannah stood, arms crossed, glowering at them, her eyes ringed with kohl, her lips bloodred. “You’re late.”
“Five minutes,” Wesley said. “Is that a new eyebrow piercing?”
“Yeah. Come on, I don’t want to miss my appointment.” She headed toward the entrance of the tattoo parlor.
“Hannah, you remember my buddy Chance Hollander,” Wesley offered, following her.
“Hi, Hannah,” Chance said, his face shiny and hopeful.
Without breaking stride, Hannah looked him over, then snorted at the shirt. “Better watch out. Someone will arrest your fat ass for false advertising.”
Undaunted, Chance trotted to keep up with her. “So this is where you get your tats?”
“Inkwell is the best tattoo parlor in town,” Hannah said. “My artist, Axle, has tattooed Tommy Lee.”
“No shit?” Chance said. “How many tattoos do you have?”
“I don’t know. After a while they all kind of run together. But he’s been working on my torso for over a year now.”
“I can’t wait to see it,” Chance said.
Hannah glared. “Axle doesn’t work cheap. Are you sure you can pay for this?”
Chance pulled out a wad of cash rolled with rubber bands. “Will this cover it?”
Hannah nodded, her mouth pursed. “Carlotta said you traffic porn, is that right?”
“That’s one of my businesses.”
“Cool,” she said.
Chance grunted and Wesley wondered if his friend had just come in his pants.
They walked into the tattoo parlor, a converted Victorian house that was rife with dark brocade wallpaper and chandeliers. The female receptionist sat behind a rolltop desk, reading Prick magazine. She was bald, with yellow cornrows tattooed onto her head. She looked up and smiled.
“Hi, Hannah.”
“Hi, Sela.”
“You’re here to see Axle?”
“Yeah, I have an appointment.” She gestured to Wesley and Chance. “I know these weirdos. They’re going to sit in.”
“You guys looking to get inked?” the girl asked.
“Uh, maybe,” Chance said.
Wesley rolled his eyes. He didn’t think so. Chance was a wuss when it came to pain.
“Go ahead,” Sela said.
Hannah led the way up a wide wooden stairway, her boots clomping on every step. The landing on the second floor was filled with T-shirts and tattoo lore. As they walked down the hall, Wesley looked around. The rooms retained high ceilings and original moldings, but had been converted into spaces that resembled doctors’ examination rooms, with barber chairs and tables for clients to accommodate whatever part of the body was being worked on, and glass cabinets of supplies like antiseptic and gauze.
Inside one room, a tattoo artist was working on a guy’s beefy arm. In another, a woman was having her ankle tattooed. About halfway down the hallway, Hannah walked into a room and high-fived a stocky guy she introduced as Axle. Axle wore jeans and a polo-style shirt, and his only visible tattoo was the wraparound black text on his neck. Wesley squinted to read it. Say something nobody understands and they’ll do practically anything you want them to. He recognized it as a quote from one of his favorite books, The Catcher in the Rye.
“Hannah, good to see you,” Axle said. “I’m glad you decided to finish your back before the rest of the art faded.”
“Tattoos fade?” Wes asked.
Axle nodded. “Over time, and faster if they’re exposed to the sun.”
“This is Wesley…and his helper,” Hannah added in a bored tone. “I told them they could watch.”
“Nice to know you,” Axle said. “I don’t mind an audience if Hannah doesn’t. Let’s get started.” He looked at Wesley. “Will you get the door?”
Wes closed the door and looked around the room at pictures of tattooed individuals, some of them celebrities, obviously clients of Axle’s. Axle moved to his tattooing machine, which looked like a mobile vacuum. At the end of a long plastic tube was the needling tool. Chance hovered close to Hannah, who had her back to Wesley. She shrugged out of her black leather vest, then lifted the hem of her tank top and pulled it off, revealing her bare back, partially tattooed.
Chance was standing in front of Hannah and stared openmouthed.
“Whoa,” Wesley said, then spun around to face the door. “Uh, no offense, Hannah, but I don’t want to see you naked.”
“Then you’d better get out, squirt.”
He didn’t have to be told twice. He slipped out the door and into the hallway, then walked to the room at the end which had once been a living or dining room but was now a waiting room with vending machines and a television. A long coffee table featured thick photo albums of customers in all their tattooed glory. He flipped through the gallery, morbidly fascinated by the people who went to such great lengths to turn their bodies into canvases, billboards and soapboxes. Some of the results were winceworthy, some were comical, and some, stunning.
There were also tattoo-design books that looked like clip art. He flipped to the religious-symbols section of several books and perused pages of cross patterns, but didn’t see one that matched the image on the paper in his pocket. Notes printed in the page footers stated the designs were merely suggested images, and that each tattoo artist owned the copyright to the unique designs they tattooed onto a person’s body. Which meant he might not be able to match the design from the headless corpse that Coop had recreated unless he stumbled across the exact artist who’d inked the tattoo.
A proverbial needle in a haystack.
A spike-haired guy in skinny black jeans and a T-shirt walked in and fed coins into the soda machine. “Are you being helped?” he asked.
Wesley scratched his temple. “I’m trying to find a guy based on his tattoo.”
Spike retrieved his soda and cracked it open. “That could be a bitch. What kind of tat?”
Wesley pulled out the piece of paper with the printed design and unfolded it. “He had it lasered off.”
The guy took the paper and squinted. “If you don’t know the guy, how did you get a picture of his tat?”
“Um…the guy’s a John Doe in a coma.”
“So you’re working for the hospital?”
“Yeah.”
Spike frowned and handed back the paper. “Get a better story, dude.”
Wesley sighed and looked around to make sure no one else was within
earshot. “Okay, look—you don’t want to know the details, trust me. I got two hundred bucks in my wallet. It’s yours if you can find out anything.”
The guy considered Wesley, then took a sip of his soda. “Is the guy going to come after me?”
“Negatory. He’s dead.”
Spike nodded. “Three hundred.”
“Two hundred now, another two if you get me a name.”
“All this for a dead guy? Why do you care?”
Wesley set his jaw. He’d do anything to make the nightmares go away. “Do we have a deal or don’t we?”
“Okay. It’s your coinage.”
Wesley nodded. And his sanity.
23
At the end of her shift, Carlotta waved goodbye to Herb the security guard and called Hannah’s number as she left the employee break room. She frowned when she got her friend’s voice mail…again. She conceded Hannah could’ve had a dozen things to do on a Saturday afternoon, but she hoped her friend wasn’t ignoring her because she blamed Carlotta for getting her fired from the catering company.
Giving in to another growing concern, she punched in Coop’s number. When his phone also rolled over to voice mail, she sighed. Two for two.
Frustration welled in her chest. Wesley and Jack said that Coop was fine, but it bothered her that he hadn’t returned any of her calls. On their last body run together, she’d found a pint of vodka under the seat of Coop’s van. She hadn’t mentioned it to him—or to anyone—hoping that he was the kind of recovering alcoholic who needed to keep temptation within reach to prove to himself that he could resist.
That was the night they had been called to the home of Shawna Whitt, the first-known victim of The Charmed Killer. Coop had been the first to notice the foreign object in the woman’s mouth. He had asserted the charm had been placed postmortem, but no one had believed him…until the second victim was discovered.
Carlotta bit her lip. How maddening would it be to possess so much knowledge, but be dismissed due to past mistakes? Is that why Coop had fallen into a funk? When she’d seen him at the memorial service for A.D.A. Cheryl Meriwether, he’d seemed a bit unkempt and withdrawn. Even before that, when she’d sought his help in uncovering a conspiracy against Olympic marathoner Eva McCoy, he’d made a strange comment to her.
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