Skin Deep

by Jerome Preisler

  “No,” Ecklie said. “I only want you to satisfy Mobley that his… postulate, let’s say, is being fully explored. There is a difference. But whether or not you agree with me, it’s important that we understand each other.”

  Catherine inhaled, exhaled. “I think we’re clear on things,” she said. “Now, if you don’t mind, we’d like to get back to work.”

  Ecklie studied the CSIs for a moment, his eyes briefly holding on Nick. Nick didn’t wait for him to complete his nod before pushing off his chair.

  Catherine hurried after him in the corridor. “Nicky,” she said. “Hang on.”

  He only stopped to turn around when he felt her grip his arm. “I can’t stand that dude,” he said, nodding back toward Ecklie’s office. “It’s tough enough making sense of things without worrying about politics. Grissom taught me to follow the evidence. That’s all I know how to do.”

  Catherine leaned close to him, smiled a conspiratorial smile. “Then do what you do, and leave the politics to me,” she said.

  4

  “YOU CAN PRETEND I’M NOT HERE,” David Hodges said, approaching the conference room’s rectangular table. “I’m just sitting in for the fun of it.”

  This was in response to Catherine asking why he’d arrived for her all-hands-on-deck meeting of the division’s criminalists. Being a laboratory technician and not a CSI, he hadn’t been required to attend her little Saturday morning confab about the macabre deaths of Quentin Dorset and Laurel Whitsen—cases that hadn’t even begun to rise and take shape in their investigative oven but that Undersheriff Ecklie had suggested his politically shell-shocked boss leaned toward squeezing ass backward into a single bakery box.

  In the glass-walled room were the CSIs directly involved in the probes—a tired-looking Nick Stokes, Sara Sidle, Greg Sanders, and Catherine herself. Rounding out the group was Raymond Langston, a criminal pathologist and published academic to boot, who was the section’s senior member agewise but, as its most recent hire, remained a Level Two.

  No one in the room knew whether Hodges’s answer had been intended as a cheeky quip. His perpetual taciturn manner made him a tough read. Hodges could be bothersome that way. Among other ways too numerous to count. But the criminalists knew he was as sharp as Occam’s metaphorical razor and had contributed to solving some of the most difficult forensic mysteries they’d tackled—once matter-of-factly uncovering a decisive piece of evidence while assisting the shorthanded criminalists in the field and seemingly staring into space as they were busily going about their work in earnest.

  “Well, knock yourself out,” Catherine said, nodding him toward the table.

  “Long as you don’t glom a custard doughnut,” Nick said. He pointed to a cardboard assortment tray in the middle of the table. “That’s where the fun ends.”

  Hodges gave Nick a flat look, strode past him, and took an empty chair between Sidle and Langston.

  Catherine watched him get settled over the rim of her paper coffee cup. “Okay, let’s compare notes,” she said. “Nick, how about you get us started on Dorset?”

  He nodded, got out his pocket computer, and opened his notes folder. “About three o’clock yesterday morning, some clubbers from Philadelphia discover his body in a trailer depot on Koval Lane. They’d been bounced from a taxi out toward the airport—”

  Greg looked at him. “How do you get bounced from a cab?”

  Nick produced one of those weary, sighing laughs. “Weekends in Vegas, dude,” he said, and went on to sum up the rest. “Doc Robbins gave the body a preliminary exam when it came in, took some test samples. He’s doing the full autopsy today.”

  “Any COD?” Catherine asked.

  “Nothing positive,” Nick said. “Looks like he was given an intravenous anesthetic. Same as with the prior abductions.”

  “Do we know what drug was used?”

  “Could be Diprivan. Toxicology is working on it.”

  “So maybe we’re looking at an overdose.”

  “Either as a primary cause of death or with other complications,” Nick said. “Again, the tox results should help.”

  Catherine clucked her tongue. “I think we should be asking if there is anything to substantiate that the Tattoo Man abductions were committed by a single person.”

  “Or group of people,” Sara said. “We can’t rule out multiple perpetrators.”

  “Are you talking cult crime?”

  “Gang, cult, whatever,” she said. “I’m just saying it’s possible more than a single person is involved.”

  Catherine was nodding. “In a way, that goes right back to my question,” she said. “How are or aren’t the attacks consistent?”

  “I’ve boned up some on the other two cases just to make sure everything’s current between us and the detectives,” Nick said. He thumbed his keypad, consulting his notes. “Just to review everything we know, the first victim’s a woman named Stacy Ebstein. Fortyish, worked as a special-events coordinator at the Starglow Hotel and Casino. Grabbed while getting out of her car late one night. Remembers seeing a nondescript white male on the street but doesn’t even know for sure if he’s the guilty party. One minute she’s stepping into her driveway, the next she’s dead to the world. And that’s how she stays till she wakes up in Cave Lake State Park—with a scary-as-hell interlude that her mind blocks out till Brass persuades her to see a police psychologist.”

  “Namely?”

  “At some point, she regained consciousness in a room or closet with mirrors all around her,” Nick said. “She was tied or handcuffed to a chair and shown the tattoo work on her face. She described it as being like an unveiling. Also used the word ritual.”

  “And then?”

  “From what we know, everything else is mostly a blank. She refused to cooperate after that first shrink session. Brass tells us it made her pretty hysterical. She does recall someone in the room with her, though. A man wearing a hood or mask. But not much else before the park.”

  Catherine felt a cold spot like an icy thumbprint in her stomach. She sipped her coffee to thaw it, hoping her shudder went unnoticed. “And the second case?”

  “Mitchell Noble, twenty-seven, adult-novelty-store manager. He’s pulling down the security gates after the place closes when somebody knocks him out from behind. Thinks he might’ve taken a blow to the head, but there’s something else, too. Like needles or pins in the back of his neck. He’s in limbo till he opens his eyes in a room full of mirrors. Gets a look at what’s been done to him, passes out, comes to in a school yard a few days later.”

  Catherine sighed. “Stacy Ebstein’s nightmare all over again.”

  “Yeah,” Nick said. “Just with different scenery at the end.”

  “Do we have photos of the victims?”

  “Before and after,” Catherine said. She took several shots from a large brown envelope in front of her and passed them around the table. By the time they came back to Catherine, she knew she had company in having to suppress chills. “Is there anything to suggest that these people are somehow interconnected?” she asked. “Even without being aware of it?”

  “Not that we know,” Nick said. “There’s no apparent relevance to the time frame between the abductions… but I’ll keep looking into that angle.”

  “Any chance that they’re all customers of that sex shop?”

  “They weren’t, as far as the police reports go.”

  Nick’s look said they could only wish things were that simple. She was reaching, and they both knew it. Brass’s detectives would have picked up on those links—which wasn’t to rule out the chance that there might be others. Catherine tapped Sara’s photos. “How about their tattoos? The method, designs, dyes…”

  “Nick and I plan to visit them and request that they submit to voluntary epithelials,” Sara said. “Neither has had any taken yet. That would give us a solid basis for comparison.”

  Hodges cleared his throat. “Ah,” he said. “I noticed something about the composition
of one of the inks.”

  The CSIs gave him a moment to savor their combined attention.

  “I haven’t had a chance to analyze Dorset’s facial excisions,” he went on. “But Robbins also sent me eye swabs, and the pigments are mainly natural indigo and powdered lignite—or soft coal. There’s a bit of logwood, too. The carrier’s plant-derived glycerin and water.”

  “Is that significant?” Catherine asked.

  Hodges shrugged. “It’s a very low-irritant vegan formulation. In contrast to dyes that use animal and mineral products.”

  Catherine waited for the rest, but he was still basking. She wound her hand in the air. “Let’s have it.”

  “It could be whoever tattooed the judge’s eyes is a card-carrying member of PETA. But I think he was being very careful not to blind him with a harsher ink,” he said. “It fits what his other victims said about him. That he wanted them to see what he’d done.”

  Hodges reclined in his chair, clearly pleased with himself. Catherine decided that he was entitled. But his ego would be fine without a massage. She glanced around the conference table. “Does he want to torment these people with his work, or is he looking for admiration?”

  “Both,” Langston said, breaking his attentive silence. “He takes them against their will. Exerts his power and control. These are classic sociopathies. But he isn’t just mutilating his captives. He’s transforming them into perverse, living works of art.” He paused and folded his hands on the table. “What we don’t know at this stage is how he selects them—whether they’re random targets, have some relationship to him, or are typed by certain characteristics.”

  Catherine looked at Nick and Sara. “We’ll see if you two turn up any new details when you talk to his earlier vics,” she said. “Are we through with Dorset for now? Because I want to get to Laurel Whitsen.”

  No one offered anything. She nodded, gave them a rundown of the circumstances surrounding the discovery of the librarian’s body, and nodded again, this time at Greg Sanders.

  “Laurel was heavy into tats—the ink and branding we saw at the crime scene were just for openers,” Greg said. “Phillips is autopsying her, and he photocopied me a rough chart based on his exterior exam.” He opened a folder to review the diagram aloud. “She has nipple and genital piercings, plural in each case. Scarification tattoos on her breasts, including a Buddhist mandala. There’s an elaborate skinning piece that covers most of her back from her waist to her shoulders. Flowers and branches. They could be apple blossoms, cherry blossoms, dogwood, I’m not sure. Also…”

  “Hold on,” Sara said. “Skinning?”

  “Right,” Greg said. “It’s what it sounds like. The skin’s removed to create scar patterns.”

  She shook her head. “Sounds painful.”

  “Just a little.” Greg combed a hand through his hair. “Laurel had four tattoo parlors in her cell phone’s address book. Two in Boston, another in San Francisco, one here in Vegas called Raven Lunar. Her friend listings had photos attached to them, and, surprise, they’re mostly tattoo freaks.”

  Langston raised his hand. Catherine tried not to smile. Broad, bespectacled, his skin a light mocha color, the former college educator still occasionally fell back on lecture-hall protocols and tended to dress as if a sport jacket were a strict professorial must.

  “Ray,” she said.

  “I believe we should make an effort to steer clear of preconceptions about the victim’s way of life and the lifestyles of the people she knew,” he said. “When I was growing up, my father liked to remind me that tattoos were for jailbirds and what he’d call ‘gutter boys.’ The grunge movement popularized them in the nineties, and later on, athletes and movie stars brought them closer to the mainstream, but it doesn’t mean that the social stigma attached to body art has been removed. A lot of people still assume that lower-back tattoos on young women are signs of promiscuity—”

  “Tramp stamps,” Sara said. “I get your point, Ray. But don’t you think voluntarily being skinned constitutes self-punishment?”

  Catherine recalled the term Ecklie had used in his office: masochistic.

  Langston adjusted his eyeglasses. “It might. Or not. Depending on the individual. Scarification is regarded by some as the purest form of body art, shaped from a person’s own flesh and healing abilities, with nothing to mediate between the hand of the artist and the recipient. This creates an intimate bond between them. Very few cultures don’t have some traditional form of it. Africans, Asians, Native Americans… it’s an ancient practice around the world, with social and spiritual connotations.”

  “So you’re saying you wouldn’t consider it peculiar?”

  He shrugged. “My understanding is that our job requires we keep open minds.”

  Sara frowned but gave no response.

  Catherine had listened to them thoughtfully. “I think we can all agree that there’s nothing spiritual about putting a bullet in a woman’s head and then cutting half the flesh off her arm,” she said, and checked her watch. “Okay, let’s wrap this up. I’m going to drop in on Phillips, then head over to ballistics. It’s a long shot, but maybe we can track the gun.” She drained her coffee. “Greg, where do we stand with Laurel’s next of kin?”

  “Her mom’s flying in from California—the head librarian kept her number on record as an emergency contact.”

  “Good. You should start getting in touch with the people in her address book, see what leads you can pick up about who might’ve done this. And that local tattoo parlor… Lunar something?”

  “Raven Lunar.”

  “Why don’t you pay it a visit?” Catherine said. She paused and glanced over at Langston. “In fact, Ray, I’d like you to join him.”

  He showed a wry smile. “For social and cultural perspective?”

  “There’s that,” she said, and winked. “But I also thought you’d look great sporting some neck ink above your collar.”

  * * *

  “If I was giving you a house edge,” Phillips was explaining, “I would’ve said to put money on this woman dying from a bullet wound to the head.”

  “Right,” Catherine said.

  “So it seemed like the reasonable place to start.”

  “Right.”

  “My autopsy, that is.”

  “Right.”

  “Sometimes I have to follow the bouncing ball.”

  Catherine looked at him. “Okay, Dave,” she said. “I get you.”

  Phillips stood beside the dissection table in his scrub suit, nodding as he displayed the top of Laurel Whitsen’s skull in his gloved hands. He had seemed to loosen up before Catherine’s eyes, reassured that she was genuinely simpatico. For the most part in criminal investigations, the dissection began with a Y incision from the shoulders and breastbone down to the pelvis, the purpose of which was to expose the rib cage, abdomen, and vital organs. But with the probable cause of Laurel’s death fairly obvious, he’d followed his “bouncing ball”—the hole and cranial damage left by the nine-millimeter slug’s entry—and sawed into the skull first, separating the top from the lower sections with a chisel.

  Catherine supposed that Phillips’s tendency to overexplain his procedures stemmed from playing second fiddle to Al Robbins for so long. While Robbins did not seem at all the morgue-room autocrat, his presence loomed large over its postmortem affairs.

  Phillips held the inverted skull lid in one hand and motioned to three distinct marks with the other. Two were shallow nicks. The third, a wider fracture, had radial lines spreading from it like a concave glass surface hit by a stone. “You see the scoring in the bone? The projectile ricocheted inside this woman’s head. Glancing off the skull here and then here.” He touched the nicks and put his finger on the larger area of damage. “This is where it hit before deflecting downward and out behind her ear. It’s a stellate fracture caused by blunt-force impact—imagine getting clubbed from inside the head.”

  Catherine mulled that over. “The gun was a nine, Dav
e,” she said. “Wouldn’t it be unusual for anything but a very small-caliber slug—say, a twenty-two—to start rattling around in there?”

  “As a general rule, yeah,” Phillips said. “Bigger bullets tend to go in and out. Smaller ones are sometimes retained and act like pinballs. But I ran a trajectory rod through the brain from the entrance wound. It went straight to the first point of deflection. There are also tiny bullet fragments and bone chips in the brain itself.”

  Catherine thought another moment, then nodded toward the body on the morgue table. “You think she could have stayed conscious for any length of time after she was shot?”

  “Absolutely. Some people with a bullet in the brain don’t lose their neurological functions all at once. They can stay alert or semialert for hours if the medulla or a major artery isn’t struck.” He stood thoughtfully regarding the damaged white roof of Laurel Whitsen’s skull. “There’s an Alabama woman who took a forty-five between the eyes in the middle of a traffic incident. She wasn’t even aware of it till she pulled off the highway to report it to the police. Another lady in London was shot point-blank in the head by her husband, watched him commit suicide, and brewed herself a cup of tea before phoning for help.”

  “How proper.” Catherine sighed. “Our vic seems to have found the strength and presence of mind to get up and place a call to nine-one-one. But when she reached the emergency operator, Laurel said something about having to return a book to the shelf and then went back to the next room to do it before she collapsed.”

  Phillips nodded and carefully placed the skull top on a tray. “I have her brain in the scale,” he said. “Come take a look.”

  They moved to the hanging metal pan above the dissection table. Phillips lifted out the brain and showed it to Catherine, turning the soft, creased mass so she could see its rear portion.

  “Notice anything about the parietal lobe?”

  Catherine nodded. It would have been difficult not to notice the soft, swollen red lesion. “A hematoma,” she said. “Does it align with the blunt-force damage to the skull?”