Skin Deep

by Jerome Preisler

  “Because you all use screen names,” Brass said.

  “That, too, is indeed correct,” Chenard said. “Mine being Virgo because it is my astrological sign.”

  Willows looked at him. “Mr. Chenard, you’ve said you do know the name of the seller. The individual who assembled the group and has been murdering people for their tattoos—”

  “One moment, Ms. Willows,” Billson said, raising a hand. “Before my client responds, I’d like to ascertain that his offer to cooperate fully with your investigation will be rewarded with a recommendation of leniency.”

  “We’ve already told you it will,” Brass said.

  “I understand. But, like you, I want to be absolutely certain of things.”

  Brass grunted and pointed at the video camera on the ceiling. “As you know, Counselor, this entire conversation’s being recorded. A deal is a deal, so you can settle down.”

  Billson glowered but left it at that.

  “About the auctioneer,” Catherine said, picking up where she’d left off. “You are confirming that his name is Bockem.”

  “William Bockem, yes,” he said. “We have ties going back many years.”

  Catherine was thinking Gris would be ecstatic when he heard about this. “Because your family has bought art from his family.”

  “Yes. When both lived in Europe,” Chenard said. He frowned. “Although you should be aware I’ve never gotten any sort of discount or special treatment because of that relationship, much to my chagrin.”

  “Pity.” Brass sighed. “Okay, how about we cut to the chase? According to you, Bockem is preparing to auction off the skins he took from Laurel Whitsen and the other two Flash Ink: Las Vegas contestants, Diachi Sato and Lynda Griffith. That right?”

  “Yes. Tomorrow, in fact. I meant to bid on all three pieces,” Chenard said. “Took is such a nasty word, however. Might we use the term harvested instead? It’s far more refined and indicative of how I view their appropriation.”

  “I don’t care how you view it,” Brass said testily. “What I do care about is our deal. And to repeat its specifics for the benefit of you, your counsel, and those goddamn cameras over our heads, it is that you are going to bid on those pieces of dead human beings tomorrow, and you are going to make sure you’re the winner. And when Bockem comes to deliver them to that beautiful home of yours, I will be waiting there to bust his sick, ghoulish ass. Are we in agreement here, Chenard?”

  Chenard glanced at Billson, received a nod, and then returned his attention to Brass, crossing his arms over his chest. “Your crude vocabulary aside, Detective, I believe we are,” he said.

  Two cases, two killers. Catherine had been right all along… but she was by no means feeling celebratory.

  Ten minutes after leaving Brass to finish up with Chenard and his attorney at headquarters, she was next door at the morgue with Nick and Sara, where the CSIs had been summoned to hear the results of Doc Robbins’s preliminary autopsy on Frank Dumas, a.k.a. Tattoo Man.

  Like every other aspect of the probe, it had yielded anything but predictable results and compounded tragedy atop senseless tragedy. Dumas had not only been mistaken about his son’s killer—a maniac who was never arrested for the crime and who, for all anyone knew, was still at large somewhere these many years later—but he’d let his vengeful impulses destroy his sanity and then turned them upon innocent people when he’d thought his own life was nearing its end.

  Which, Robbins was explaining over Dumas’s Y-sectioned remains, had been yet another instance of him being terribly wrong.

  “It’s hard to fathom,” Nick said. “You’re positive he didn’t have cancer?”

  “I didn’t find any sign of it,” he said, leaning on his cane. “Certainly, there was no malignancy in his lungs, as he apparently believed.”

  “Just a tree,” Sara said.

  “A sapling,” Robbins clarified. He set the towel in his hand down on the stainless-steel morgue counter and unfolded it to reveal the three-inch-long evergreen specimen wrapped inside. “It’s an anomalous occurrence—but not a singular one. There was a similar instance in Russia several years back. A patient shows up at a hospital or clinic coughing up blood. The doctors see a large shadow on his MRIs and decide he has a metastasized tumor in his lung. But when they open him up, they find a tree. With roots, branches, and leaf buds.”

  Standing beside Nick, Catherine shook her head. “It’s a strange one from start to finish, isn’t it?” she said.

  “Yeah,” Nick said. “About three years after his son’s death, Dumas quits his job as a commercial artist and sells his house. He uses the money he’s saved up from his job and freelance gigs—and the profits from selling his home—to buy the warehouse on Poppy Lane.”

  “And then he goes underground,” Sara said. “Travels the country, learns the tattoo trade, earns a rep as a master of the art.”

  “Even though there isn’t a single tattoo on his body,” Robbins said. “I found fresh wounds from a recent suspension and older scars from previous ones. But that’s it. There’s no deliberate scarification, no ink anywhere.”

  “Pretty unusual in itself,” Sara said. “Especially when you consider he’d achieved what amounts to cult status in the tattoo community.”

  Nick looked at her. “The bottom line is that Dumas was good at what he did. Great, I guess. And he shared what he learned along the way with other artists.”

  Silence momentarily pressed against the tiled walls of the room. “I wonder whether his plan for the kidnapping spree started taking shape right after his son’s death or maybe the dismissal of the case against Clarkson,” Catherine said. “If it was growing inside him all this time just like that tree. And if learning the tattoo trade was an intentional part of it.”

  “That’s possible,” Nick said. “Keeping his body an ink-free zone also would’ve made him harder for his victims to identify. Nothing to cover up… could be it was deliberate.”

  “The guy who sold him the Bowie knife up in Miriam said he would’ve never guessed Dumas was a sociopath,” Sara added. “He was buying it for a human sacrifice—the sacrifice of a child, no less—and having a friendly conversation with him the entire time. It’s almost as if he was disguised in his own skin.”

  There was another silence in the room, this one longer than the first.

  “His belief that he had a terminal disease and was nearing the end was the final psychotic trigger for his mission… or at least made him decide its time had come,” Catherine said. “But I don’t understand why he didn’t have himself checked out by a doctor.”

  Robbins shrugged. “He might’ve done so initially and not followed through, like that Russian man,” he said. “Remember what I told you about the feldscherer in medieval Europe? In our country, there’s one thing most freelance artists live without, and professional tattooers are statistically the fastest-growing subgroup to deal with the problem. The costs are prohibitive even for those who do well enough to support themselves in a fairly comfortable manner.”

  Catherine looked at him, comprehension dawning over her features. “Dumas was a tattoo artist,” she said after a moment. “He had no health insurance.”

  “Mr. Chenard, I’m quite pleased to deliver these to you,” William Bockem said. “They are works of the first order.”

  Across the table from him in his atrium, Chenard deeply inhaled the perfume of his cultivated orchids, savoring it perhaps for the final time as he took the skins in their tubes and brown paper wrappings. “I’m sure the other bidders were disappointed,” he said.

  Bockem gave a dismissive shrug. “While I admit I was surprised you won the entire lot, your bids came in higher than theirs,” he said. “Fine art should go to those who desire it most. As you know, it is something I learned from my father and that he learned from his.”

  Chenard nodded, his hands on the tubes. How he wished he could take them with him.

  “Well, I’d best be off now,” Bockem said. He reached do
wn beside his chair and lifted the attaché case full of bills Chenard had given him. “May we continue our business into the future.”

  Chenard looked at him. “That would be my wish.”

  “I believe the next competition is in New York City,” Bockem said, rising. “There’s quite a thriving creative community there, and I have no doubt I’ll obtain some wonderful pieces—”

  Bockem started, his eyebrows lifting. He’d been facing the French doors leading from the house and noticed a sudden, rustling movement through the reflected sunlight on their glass panels.

  He had time enough to give Chenard a brief quizzical glance before the doors were flung open and a bullish man in a dark blue suit stepped through, followed by several others in police uniforms.

  “Detective Jim Brass, LVPD homicide,” he said. “Enjoyed listening to your conversation, but if I were in your shoes, I wouldn’t make any travel reservations for the Big Apple for a while.”

  Ray Langston turned his car into the parking lot, pulled into an empty slot, got out, and strode up to the tattoo studio.

  “Hi, Doc,” Raven Lunar said from behind her front counter, facing the door as he walked in. “You’re a little early, aren’t you?”

  “I’m not used to days off,” he said with a shrug. “They play tricks with my timing.”

  She smiled. “That’s okay. It’ll give us a chance to go over the sketches. They’re all based on your design.”

  Langston took a moment to admire the paper koinbori hanging from the ceiling. “Are they down here?” he said. “The sketches, that is…”

  She shook her head. “I kept them in the private studio. I figured you’d want to get a look at them. Before I show them to my clients, that is.”

  “I do… and thank you.”

  Raven’s smile grew larger and brighter. “They’re going to be beautiful,” she said. “I really wish the world knew of your talent.”

  Langston flashed a grin at least as warm as hers. “A little secret here and there never hurt anyone,” he said, and started upstairs.

  About the Author

  JEROME PREISLER has written almost thirty books of fiction and nonfiction. He is the author of the Tom Clancy Power Plays series published by Berkley Books, all of which have been top-of-the-list New York Times bestsellers, have sold millions of copies worldwide, and have been translated into many languages. These include Politika, Ruthless.com, Shadow Watch, Bio-Strike, Cold War, Cutting Edge, Zero Hour, and Wild Card. Jerome’s previous novel in the CSI: Crime Scene Investigation series, Nevada Rose, was published by Pocket Star Books in 2008.

  Jerome is the co-author (with Ken Sewell) of the narrative history All Hands Down: The True Story of the Soviet Attack on the USS Scorpion, currently available in paperback from Pocket Star. His next work of nonfiction about the most extraordinary submarine battle of WW II will be published by Berkley in 2012.

  Jerome and his wife, Suzanne Preisler, have collaborated on several pseudonymously written comedic mysteries, including A Brisket, A Casket, the first in a new series to be published by Kensington Books.

  Jerome is now in his sixth year of writing baseball commentary and analysis for YesNetwork.com, the official website of the New York Yankees Entertainment & Sports Network. His newest regular column for YES, Yankees Ink, was launched after the Yankees’ 2009 World Championship season and is among the site’s most popular features.

  He may be reached at Preisler@JeromePreisler.com.