Skin Deep

by Jerome Preisler

  “You want to bring out the hammer, fine. We’ve got lawyers for that.”

  “Bet they can recite the Constitution backward and forward.”

  “The Bill of Rights, too, man.”

  “Eyes closed, I’m sure,” Greg said. “They work pro bono?”

  “Huh?”

  “Guys that smart don’t have sale tags hanging off their designer suits,” Greg said. “But they’ve usually got whopping hourly rates and expenses, and that’s before they tack on court fees.”

  “So you’re telling me what, exactly?”

  “That I’m trying to stop a killer,” Greg said. “And that it might be worth your while to cooperate before you lose any more of your subscriber base to him.”

  Silence at Watney’s end of the line. Then a long expulsion of breath. “Okay, fine, I’ll see what I can do, ” he said. “Where you want to start?”

  Greg pumped his fist in the air, thinking Archie was going to love this.

  “With you putting me in touch with your custodian of records,” he said.

  “So, to reiterate, while ours is a city of fabulous dreams, a city where freedom and creativity reign, we are also a city that is serious about law and order. A city where serial murderers will not be tolerated for any reason!” Stancroft emphatically boomed into his mike.

  Her lips numb from the icy wind, the tip of her nose stinging, Catherine sat among the mayor’s captive audience, wondering exactly what city in the United States he supposed had found a right reason to give serial killers a pass.

  “I realize some may be offended by tattoos and other bodily markings based on moral or religious views,” he said. “But as we approach the Easter holiday, we must remember that ink only goes skin deep and that we are all God’s children under the skin. In this time of rebirth, this season of new beginnings, I know the bloodthirsty homicidal lunatic prowling our streets, boulevards, and family attractions will be brought to a place of atonement and that he must soon answer for his massacre of the innocents…”

  Catherine checked her wristwatch. After going at it for about twenty minutes, it sounded as if Stancroft finally might be bringing things to a wrap—and Nick was still a no-show. Even if he arrived that very moment, he’d probably escaped the worst of it, lucky him.

  Her envy aside, she hoped he’d made some progress on the Tattoo Man case. Because it seemed to her that besides enhancing his reputation as a fool and mangling religious metaphors, Stancroft’s idiotic rant about bloody massacres and whatnot was bound to stir up the very commotion he wanted to avoid once it was snipped into sensationalistic audio bites and hit the airwaves in time for the Monday morning commute.

  She frowned, shoving her hands into her pockets. How had it gotten so miserably cold and windy out so fast?

  “This a Sunday sermon or a press conference?” Brass whispered to her.

  She gave him a sidewise glance and lowered her head so the cameras wouldn’t catch her response. “Don’t ask me, Jim,” she said. “I can’t stand sitting through either of ’em.”

  Lighted by muted stained-glass lamps and scented candles and separated from its back room by velvet drapes that dropped in heavy folds behind strings of hanging beads, Miss Annabelle’s ofisa, as she referred to her fortune-telling shop, was small and squarish, with a table and wicker chairs on a maroon Oriental rug in the middle of the floor. The storefront display window and curtained-off rear accounted for two sides of the space, with a large Egyptian zodiac circle occupying a third, and cubbyhole shelves holding various religious icons and mystical charms on the wall opposite.

  Seated across from Nick at the table, Miss Annabelle had removed her sunglasses and shawl but left her kerchief on. Her face was tattooed with three sets of pale gray hands, their long, bony fingers tapering to inhuman claws. One pair appeared to be folded across her eyes. Depending on the tilt of her head, Nick was able to glimpse the outspread hands covering her ears. The third pair looked as if they were clasped over her mouth and chin.

  See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.

  With a single major exception, the story she’d told so far was much the same as the accounts given by Tattoo Man’s other known victims. She’d left the ofisa after closing time one night about six months ago and was about to enter her parked car when someone came up behind her. She’d felt a hard, stunning blow to the back of her head, then another sensation she compared to a bee sting, before losing consciousness.

  After that, her memory was ragged—full of dangling threads and wide-open holes. She recalled a buzzing noise of the sort Stacy Ebstein had described in her statements to detectives. Like Ebstein and Noble, she remembered suddenly awakening in a room with mirrored walls and the gajo standing behind her in a hood or a mask, speaking to her in the softest of voices.

  “Gajo?” Nick asked.

  “Someone who is not Romani,” she said. “Like yourself.”

  Feeling vaguely disparaged, Nick nodded and motioned for her to continue. After briefly coming to in the room, she’d blacked out again for an unknown period, only to regain her senses late one night in an abandoned lot on the west side of town. She recalled having wandered the neighborhood for a while before finding a pay phone and placing a collect call to a member of her famiglia—her extended family—the members of which had been frantically searching everywhere for her for almost an entire week and who’d driven over to pick her up at once and… then gotten their first look at her unbelievably changed appearance.

  Nick held up a hand to interrupt her. Similar story to the rest, with one glaring exception. He wanted the point clarified, though he had a feeling he knew what she’d tell him.

  “Ma’am, why didn’t you contact the police about any of this?”

  She looked at Nick as if he’d asked how come she hadn’t used her signal watch to summon Superman from his Fortress of Solitude.

  “We take care of our own,” she said simply. “Gajo law is not our law.”

  “Then why call me today? After all this time?”

  “A man was killed.”

  “Judge Dorset, you mean.”

  She gave a nod. “When this happens, I cannot be silent.”

  Nick decided there was nothing to gain by pressing her to elaborate. He had more basic and critical questions that needed asking—though, again, he didn’t figure they’d get him much mileage. “Do you have any idea why someone would do this to you? Or who it might be?”

  “Maybe,” she said slowly. “I think maybe so.”

  Nick opened his mouth. “You do?” Closed it again. Then he waited in silence a moment, watching her eyes grow distant with recollection.

  “Ten years ago,” she said, “a young boy was taken from his father. Dumas…”

  Kyle Dumas? Nick thought, consciously willing his jaw not to drop again. While sloughing through Mitchell Noble’s files, he had noticed the boy’s name several times, indexed along with cross-references to the photos of his father holding his body, the Dorset court docket log, and the attached newspaper stories. “Go on,” he said. “Please.”

  “In this time, my ofisa is not here.”

  “It was in a different location then?”

  “Yes.”

  “And where was that?”

  “Shhtoort Avenue,” she said.

  Shtoor—? “Stewart Avenue?” Nick said, wrestling with her pronunciation.

  “Yes.”

  “Near the Starglow?”

  “It is one mile away,” she replied, nodding. “Maybe less.”

  Nick was remembering every detail he could about the Dumas case, reminding himself not to share too many of them with Miss Annabelle. He did not want to color her recollections with anything he might have read.

  “How is what happened to you connected to the boy’s kidnapping?” he asked.

  “They say the boy is with his father, yes? That the father leaves him in store to take car out of parking lot…”

  Close, Nick thought. It hadn’t actually been a store b
ut rather the Desert Game video arcade on Main and Fremont, right past the mall. Frank Dumas, the father, had taken him there on a Sunday afternoon, leaving his car around the corner in the municipal garage.

  “Back then, I live in apartment over ofisa,” Miss Annabelle was saying. “There is market near to it, I often go to buy things…”

  “Hanson’s Grocery?” Nick said.

  “Yes.”

  Nick knew the area. The grocery was on South Main northwest of the Starglow and video arcade, like Miss Annabelle’s old parlor. But it was even closer to them, probably an eighth of a mile away, tops.

  “Tell me about the day Kyle Dumas was abducted,” he said.

  She looked at him, but her eyes seemed distant. “I go to market, shop for many groceries, walk back to ofisa with wagon. When I cross street, I see white truck… no, not truck… eh…” She paused, groping for the right word, shaking her head in frustration.

  “A van?” Nick said.

  “Yes, van,” she said. “It make turn in front of me, drive too fast. Man is driving, and there is little boy in back.” She made a pushing gesture with her hands. “I can see boy doing this by the window. And he is crying.”

  “You’re sure about all that?”

  “Yes.” Her voice trembled slightly. “I can remember like it is this minute. Wagon comes close to sidewalk… tires make loud noise… how you say?”

  “They were screeching?”

  “Yes. Like that. I pull wagon back, almost fall, look inside… and there is the boy.”

  “Was there anything written on the side of the van? A company name?”

  Miss Annabelle shook her head.

  Nick looked at her. “Nothing?” he said. “You’re positive?”

  She shook her head again. “This is also what police ask me. It is next day, I think. They come to every store in neighborhood with pictures of boy. Come to my ofisa. And I say to them the same thing.”

  “That you recognized Kyle Dumas.”

  “Yes.”

  “But that the van you saw had no writing on its side.”

  “Yes.”

  “What about the driver? Did they show you photographs of the man they believed was responsible for taking Kyle?”

  “Later, yes.”

  “So they paid you more than just a single visit?”

  “Many,” she said. “The first time, it is a police officer. After another week, two weeks, detectives. They come again. And then again. When they show me pictures of a van, I say it is different from the one I see. When they show me the man in their pictures, I tell them he is not who was with the boy.”

  “And their pictures of the vehicle…”

  “It is white, yes. But with writing on door, Leezterndoostral.”

  Nick thought a moment. “Would that be two words? Lester Industrial?”

  “Yes… is it.”

  He nodded, his thoughts again returning to Noble’s archive disc. According to the material Nick had reviewed—sacrificing a night of red-hot Tex-Mex food and music in the process—the Lester Industrial Equipment Supplies Company was where the only real suspect in the kidnapping, Ronald Clarkson, had worked as a repair and deliveryman. Prosecutors had insisted Clarkson pulled Kyle into the van, sped off, then killed him before dumping his corpse.

  “Ma’am,” Nick said, “I appreciate you going through all this and think I have an idea why you’ve done it. But I need to hear it in your own words. How does it all connect to what happened to you?”

  Miss Annabelle favored him with a pained, humorless smile. “To me,” she said. “And the judge, eh?”

  Nick waited. Maybe it was that he was running on empty, but that smile seemed to give an illusion of elasticity to the tattooed hands around her mouth, as if their clawed fingers were extending to keep her from speaking.

  He suppressed a chill as Miss Annabelle rose to her feet, went over to the chest across the room, and opened it, extracting a hardboard portfolio bound in pebbled cowhide leather. When she carried it to the table, she did not return to her chair but instead set it down in front of Nick and stood beside him, leafing through it.

  He recognized many of the newspaper photos and articles inside from Noble’s files, saw some that hadn’t been on the disc. All of them related to the Dumas murder.

  Miss Annabelle turned a page, briefly looked over an article, flipped to another page. And finally came to the photo Mitchell Noble had sold to the Globe News. Frank Dumas crouched in a sagebrush barren, cradling the battered, lifeless body of his son in his arms.

  “You gajos, you say Gypsies are liars,” she said. “But ten years ago, I tell the truth to your police. I would not help the killer of a child walk free. I would not see the wrong man punished for such a terrible crime. The judge, too, would not allow this to be.” She tapped the photo’s plastic cover sheet. “Now see what he does. To us.”

  You, Dorset, Mitchell Noble, and Stacy Ebstein. “You really think it’s him? The boy’s father?”

  The woman looked down over his shoulder. “The present is just this moment and so has only a moment’s weight. But the past is all the moments that have come before. If we carry their weight, it can break us.”

  Nick supposed he agreed, though that led to another question or two he felt it was incumbent on him to pose, even if he could guess at their answers. “Why would he do it, though? What’s he trying to accomplish?”

  She smiled again, the thin gray hands seeming to extend themselves across her mouth. Nick suddenly thought of the Silly Putty he’d played with as a kid, pressing a wad over newsprint cartoons and photos to transfer the image onto it, then stretching the stuff to distort the image. It was not a pleasant association under the circumstances.

  “This is the nightmare he cannot change,” Miss Annabelle said, giving the photo another tap. And putting a fingertip to her face, she added, “This is the dream he makes.”

  * * *

  After leaving the church in Miriam shortly before the conclusion of services, he had walked back to the railway depot outside town, again giving himself time to appreciate the high-country scenery. The mass had left him energized, and he believed his legs could have taken him twice, perhaps three times, as far as the station. He imagined himself walking without limitations, over and around mountains, down into gaping rifts in the earth, and up their arid, wrinkled sides onto lonely desert flats. And then walking on, nothing to stop him, no calling him back, his heels kicking up gravel and dust, striding over the horizon to dissipate like a cloud of fine, powdery sand over some hazy blue-and-dun vanishing point.

  He was almost saddened when he reached the station. It had been enjoyable letting his mind roam, but now there was a great deal to do. He knew this would be his last trip to Miriam. He would stay overnight, drive into town for the boy, and then head east, toward Las Vegas.

  It struck him that he had seen the last of the city, too. That when tomorrow came, he would cut loose what was behind and ahead of him, his past and future. At the altar he had prepared to release the boy’s spirit, his existence would crystallize to an eternal Now.

  Lamb of God, who take away the sins of the world, grant us peace.

  On the road outside the parking area to his right, he glanced over his opposite shoulder toward the trading post, noticed that the “Open” sign was in the door. He’d brought the knife he meant to use in his trunk, but seeing the trading post earlier had made him think to honor his sacrifice with the purity of unblooded steel.

  He turned and went inside.

  “G’mornin’—and congratulations!”

  He looked over at the sales counter near the entrance. Grinning affably at him from behind it was a tall, husky man in a flannel work shirt with tousled red hair and a fiery beard.

  “Am I a winner?” he asked the bearded man.

  “You betcha,” the shopkeeper said. “First person through the door on Sunday gets ten percent off his purchases. And that’s on top of any other discounts.”

  He gave
the shopkeeper a pleasant smile. “I didn’t see the sign.”

  “That’s ’cause I just made the policy up, my friend, so do me a favor and keep quiet about it!”

  The shopkeeper laughed now, and he laughed along with him, the sound issuing from his throat like an old recording of someone who had since died.

  “I’m Lee Rayburn, keeper of the post,” the bearded man said, coming down the counter to where he stood. He thrust out a hand. “I take it you’re here on a day trip?”

  “A little longer, I hope,” he said as they shook. “I came out for some hunting.”

  Rayburn pulled a slight face. “Oh… no kiddin’.”

  “You sound surprised.”

  “Maybe a little,” Rayburn said. “Most times, we get people out here in the fall for elk and pronghorn season. This part o’ year, there’s just fur bearers. Plus, I thought I saw you come in from town like you was takin’ in the sights.”

  He regarded Rayburn a moment, visualizing him with a brown mane and the curved horns of a pronghorn buck.

  “Actually, I went to mass,” he said. “The beautiful church overlooking the valley.”

  Rayburn nodded. “Our Lady of Guidance.”

  “That’s it… there was a full congregation.”

  “Always is up on Easter,” Rayburn said. “But now you’re gonna make me feel guilty about not attendin’.”

  “Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?” he said, prompting a slightly curious look from Rayburn. “An old quote, don’t mind me. Back to the hunting… I’m here for the small game and thought I would buy a new knife. A quality blade.”

  “Particular, huh? Think I’ve got somethin’ might be just the thing for you.”

  He smiled and nodded. Molded silicone antlers, flat with the forward-pointing tine, subtle pigments for a bony appearance. And then a wide black band running up the middle of the face.

  Rayburn came around the counter and led the way back past shelves of Native American trinkets, Western art and needlework, saddlery, wildlife taxidermy, outdoor clothing, and other locally manufactured items. The showcase containing his assorted knives was at the rear of the shop under wall racks of archery equipment, shotguns, and rifles. He stepped behind it, got his key ring out of his pocket, and unlocked the rear sliding panel.