House Infernal by Edward Lee

by Edward Lee

  "Are you the ... tattooist?"

  "Yes, I'm Terry, " she said. "Are you going to let me ink you up, Officer?"

  Berns finally shook off the initial shock. "How did you know I'm a cop?"

  She giggled. "When that redneck almost ran you down on Dock Street, I saw the gun under your coat."

  "And tell me why you seem surprised that the tattooist is a woman?"

  Berns' thoughts bumbled; then he figured he'd just tell the truth. "Not that the tattooist is a woman but a woman in a pretty tiny bikini. I don't see many bikinis in New Hampshire."

  She tapped a flip-flopped foot like someone who'd had too much coffee. "Officer, there's only three months a year when a girl can wear a bikini in this state. June, July, and August. So every June, July, and August, that's all I wear."

  "I guess that makes sense. I'm Captain Berns, by the way, Rockingham County Sheriff's Department. I'm in charge of the violent crimes unit, and-"

  She laughed out loud. "I'll bet that job sucks!"

  "Uh .. ' Berns had no response. "I was wondering if you could-"

  Before he could finish, the lissome woman's eyes darted to the photo in his hand. "That's not mine, is it?" and she quickly snatched it away from him and rushed to the wall.

  Berns' thoughts bumbled again. What the ... His eyes followed the sleek and almost-nude body.

  "It's the same guy!" she exclaimed. "I have a picture here that's almost identical! The blond guy, right? With the gold-tooth, always smiling?"

  Eureka! "He's a crabber named Freddie Johnson. Do you know him?"

  "Oh, no, I don't know him, and I never got any of their names. But ... why do you have a picture of his tattoo?"

  Berns noted now that the tattoo samples on that section of the wall were actually polaroids. "It's part of arrest procedure, ma'am. He's in jail now, in Maine. And ... why do you have a picture of his tattoo?"

  "Most customers let me take a picture to display, if it's an original or unusual design."

  Now she was leaning against the wall, arms crossed under pert breasts. Jesus. This woman's body is killing me.... Berns had to force himself not to stare. "So you're the one who gave him the tattoo?"

  "Yeah, about a year ago, I think. He was a nice guy, too, and that's a little troubling."

  Berns pulled his eyes away from her trim abdomen. "Troubling? Why?"

  She looked at~him, astonished. "Well, you're from the violent crimes unit, and you just told me he was arrested, so I don't have to be a brain surgeon to assume that he was arrested for a violent crime," she said very quickly. "And don't tell me what the crime was because I don't want to know! I don't want any negativity in my parlor."

  Berns was grateful he didn't have to explain about the murders. "I see. But what did you mean when you said you never got any of their names?"

  It was weird. It was obvious they were all friends, but they came in a week apart, almost like they didn't want to be seen together. The three of them, I mean."

  "Johnson and another man, and a woman?"

  "You already know!"

  The woman's energy level was knocking him off center, but above all he couldn't have been more encouraged. My first real lead... "Something Freddie told me himself when I questioned him. But he didn't tell me who these other two people were-"

  "Oh, that's too bad because, well, like I said, I didn't get their names, and I never saw them much."

  "The other guy was younger, right?"

  ..Y .. ep.

  "And the woman was slim and kind of a..."

  "Beat-down weathered bar-tramp," she said blankfaced, then laughed after his pause.

  "Took the words right out of my mouth. Could you pick them out of a lineup, or if I showed you mug shots?"

  "Oh, I'm sure I could," she said, seeming eager.

  Berns thought, Eureka! In less than a day he could have someone from the county records department print out photos of anyone in the area with priors who matched the descriptions.

  She continued, talking quickly, her hands moving with her lips. "The first week, the blond guy came in. Then a week later, the other guy, and-"

  "Then the woman, a week apart?"

  "Right."

  "But you figure they're all friends because they came in asking for the same tattoo," Berns supposed.

  "Uh-huh, and they wouldn't let me stencil the design. They all insisted I ink it by sight."

  Berns didn't know much about the art of tattooing but her comment raised a technical question. "So they brought their own copy of the design?"

  "Same copy each time."

  "What? Something from a book? It would be great if you could remember the name of the book."

  "No, no, it wasn't a book. It was just a sheet of that lined, yellow writing paper. And I'm sure it was the same sheet of paper each week when the next person brought it in to copy."

  Curious. "How can you be sure?"

  "It had a lot of writing on it, scribble, really. I'm very interested in words, it's sort of my hobby."

  "Words are your-"

  "I love words!" she emphasized. "New words, different words. I belong to four different word-of-the-day Web sites."

  What the hell is she talking about?

  She grinned, aiming a finger. "You probably don't know what I'm talking about, huh? They have these Web sites that send you a new word every day so you can enrich your vocabulary, and they're cool words, like desultory and parsimonious and inviolate, you know?"

  ';Uh...

  She rushed off to her desk, a sylphlike blur, and returned a moment later with her business card. "On the back I wrote the Web address--check it out, it's free!"

  "I'll ... be sure to do that."

  "But anyway, I just like words. And that's why I took a special notice of this sheet of yellow paper these people brought in. It had the diagram on it, for the tattoo, pretty much in scribble but there were also words all over the sheet, too. And they were words I've never seen beforethat's why it caught my eye. Some foreign language."

  Berns fiddled with his goatee, contemplating. A foreign language. If they really are in some kind of cult, Johnson was clearly the leader, and Johnson's grade-A white trash. What's white trash doing with foreign words scribbled on a piece of paper? "Foreign words," he muttered to himself.

  "Creepy words, too-even though I couldn't read them," she said. The lithe body seemed to squirm around in the barely existing bikini. "What I mean is there was just something creepy about the way all that writing looked, along with that"-she shot a finger to the photo on the wall-"creepy diagram."

  Berns thought further. "Do you know if they all lived in Wammsport? Freddie did up until last March, but I don't know about the others."

  "I'm not positive, but I think I saw the girl somewhere once, the grocery store maybe."

  More paydirt. Berns couldn't believe it. He was accomplishing something. "And what about Freddie? His landlord told us he lived in Wammsport most of last year."

  "Oh, yeah. I'd see him a lot" Her slender, jubilantly decorated arm pointed out the window. "I'd see Iim working the docks quite a bit."

  Berns nodded. "So it was only Johnson and his two friends you've done this tattoo for? No one else?"

  "No one else, Officer."

  For some reason, hearing this sleek women call him "Officer" made him feel silly. "Are you open year-round? I don't know anything about the tattoo business."

  "I'm open six days a week all year long. Business is great, or-here's a good word! Business is copious! Isn't that a cool word? It was yesterday's word of the day."

  Berns chuckled under his breath. "Uh, yes, it's a.' cool word, and I'm delighted that your business is ... copious."

  "It sure is," she bubbled. She grabbed a bottle of Windex and began spraying the front window. "Oh, don't mind me, I multitask. And, yeah, you might not think a little eye-blink town like this would generate a solid tattoo clientele but it really does."

  "All the watermen-"

  "Exactly. Crabbers,
clammers, lobstermen, oystermen. They move up and down the coast just like all those migrant illegals who pick seasonal vegetables. And they all want tattoos every time. There are guys out here even in the middle of winter dredging steamer clams and oysters. They're tough boys-and redneck to the max." Her body was almost a blur as she wiped the big window down, talking at the same time. "Every new port city means a new girlfriend, and that means a new tattoo. I had a guy in here once who had over two hundred hearts inked on him, and a name for each."

  "That's what I call true love," Berns thought to say, staring at the compact rump hustling in the tiny bottoms.

  Berns was becoming aroused. Yeah, that's real professional.... "I can't thank you enough for your time, miss. Hope you have a great day."

  "Oh, you too." Now she was standing on the windowsill, her slender legs V'd and calves flexed, as she meticulously cleaned the upper casement. "And don't forget to check out the word of the day. Today's word, by the way, is 'providential'. Bet'cha don't know what it means."

  Berns' eyes shamelessly slid up the back of her perfect thighs. "That's an insurance company, isn't it?"

  Her high laughter filled the shop like a burst of finches. "It's something that happens as if through divine intervention or good fortune."

  "I could use a little of that," he said, preparing to drag his eyes off her unknowing rump. Then a final question kindled in his head. "And one last thing before I take off."

  "Uh-huh?" she said, the rag making squeegee sounds.

  "Do you have any idea what that design actually is?"

  The woman stopped on the sill as if frozen, hands poised. "Oh, oh! That's right!" and then she jumped down and faced him, her eyes huge with some kind of recollection. "They called it something!"

  "The design?"

  "Yes, they had a name for it and now that I think of it, it was a really cool word...."

  "Please tell me you remember the word," Berns said, almost a whisper.

  She quickly sat down on the sill, foot tapping. Her elbow was on her bare knee, her chin in her hand as she clamped her eyes closed to think. Tap-tap-tap, the flip-flop went. The primal man in Berns' psyche could not be thwarted from looking down at the vulnerable pose. The cups of her bikini top hung down enough for most of her perfect lemon-breasts to be revealed, and their pert pink nipples.

  I really am a shitty police officer, Berns admited to himself.

  "Oh, that pisses me off! It was such a cool word, and I know I wrote it down."

  "Where?" he practically pleaded.

  "I can't remember-fuck!"

  There was something blatantly erotic about hearing her use the expletive. "Well, just think. You'll remember-"

  "Evolution, revolution-that's what it sounded like but-damn, it wasn't either of them, they're too common."

  Berns shot some wild guesses that might connect. "Institution, electrocution ..."

  "No, no, but that same sound. Locution? Damn, no, that means style of speech. Fuck!" she said again.

  Of all the information she's given me so far, F need this the most, Berns thought.

  "See, that's why I wrote it down, because it was such a cool word!"

  "A cool word, right. But, just ... What's the most natural place for you to have written it down?"

  Then she shrieked and jumped up so fast Berns almost stumbled backward.

  "It's been right here the whole time! How could I forget!" Her body spun in a blue and flesh-tone blur, back to the partition with the photos. She removed a pushpin and took down the photo of Freddie Johnson's tattoo. She handed it to Berns faceup, beaming at him.

  "What ..."

  "Turn it over," she instructed.

  He flipped the photo, and on the back in beautiful feminine handwriting was the word: Involution.

  She sighed as if letting out a long-held breath. "Now I remember."

  "I have no idea what this word means," Berns said, completely duped.

  "Well, it's one of those words that has a bunch of meanings. It can refer to anything that's complex or involved, or it can mean an act of involvement, or an overly involved grammatical structure-"

  Berns burned in disappointment. "How can that possibly-"

  She shot out a silencing finger, standing on her tiptoes. "Ooooor, it can refer to a mathematical structure of raising a number to its own power."

  Berns winced. I should've knoum it wouldn't make any sense. "I still don't see what that could possibly have to do with that screwy diagram-"

  She shot out her finger again. "Ooooor, the last definition-from geometry, a curve that spirals inward."

  Hmm, he thought, looking back at the face of the photo. Just like the design itself. "A curve that spirals inward, huh?"

  "Like the number six," she added.

  Chapter Seven

  (I)

  The unfaltering heat inside the prior house made Venetia feel prickly, and it only soured her mood after speaking to Dan Holden. Unpacking addled her nerves; she caught herself looking around the bedroom every few minutes and wondering exactly where the nun had been murdered. Patricia Stevenson, she recalled. Venetia's eyes locked down on the sparse metal-railed bed. I hope she wasn't murdered on the same bed I have to sleep on! At least some of her unease lifted when she left the bedroom.

  It just infuriated her. Father Driscoll ... Why didn't he tell me? A pair of recent murders wasn't easy to overlook. She busied herself in the atrium, changing the bags on several vacuum cleaners; then she began applying masking tape to some of the windows that she could tell hadn't been painted yet.

  "Oh, I was just about to get to that myself," Father Driscoll said, appearing from an office doorway. Dust and plaster scuffs besmirched his black shirt. "We've still got a few minutes before dinner."

  Venetia turned briskly. "What's this all about?"

  "Pardon me?"

  "You told me the previous staff retired. Now I hear they were murdered. That's an interesting definition for retirement."

  He tried to deflect a wince. "Don't believe everything you hear."

  "Oh, so Dan made it up?"

  "Ah, the king of gossip. I should've known." Driscoll unreeled some masking tape. "Actually only half of the staff was murdered. Two women-the other two left."

  "Oh, only half the staff," Venetia replied as sarcastically as possible. "And what about Father Whitewood? You told me he retired too, but Dan says he disappeared."

  "Disappeared ..." The dusty priest shrugged. "Ibat's a bit melodramatic. He was old, Venetia. The murders traumatized him. He had a nervous breakdown, so he ran away."

  Venetia studied him. She couldn't believe she was being this brusque with a priest. "So you're admitting that you lied to me?"

  "Lie ..." He winked. "That's a bit melodramatic, too. I merely left out some details that weren't pertinent-"

  "Weren't pertinent!" Venetia almost laughed.

  "And, yes, I'll admit that those details didn't serve my needs. So I ... skirted the truth, for the good of the Church." He seemed totally calm as he applied more tape around the window trim. "If I'd told you everything, you might not have come, and I really need help here. Half a dozen other students signed up initially, but they all canceled when-"

  "When they found out there'd been murders here," Venetia cut in.

  "Yes," he said. "It's a terrible tragedy, but don't overreact."

  Is he trying to piss me off? "Well, I'm sorry, Father Driscoll, but I don't think anybody would be overreacting to learn that a nun was murdered in her bedroom."

  Driscoll picked up a Red Devil razor knife to cut off some tape. "Murders happen all the time, Venetia. Women get murdered all the time. It's part of the world's evil. It was a random incident. The police think some drug addicts broke into the prior house looking for things to steal. They stumbled onto some of the staff and got scared."

  "Happens all the time," she echoed.

  "I don't know what you're all riled up about," he added. "You're a Christian."

  Venetia gaped.
"What's that got to do with it?"

  "Lottie Jessel and Sister Patricia Stevenson are in God's house now-of that you can rest assured."

  Was he trying to make a joke of it? Venetia just shook her head.

  "I'm starving," the priest said when he finished the next window. "Let's go eat."

  Venetia smelled something familiar when they entered the big, sterile kitchen where Mrs. Newlwyn and Betta were busy. Suddenly she was hungry, even after all the nonappetizing information. Father Driscoll's probably right. I am overreacting. "Is there anything I can do to help, Mrs. Newlwyn?"

  The tall woman turned with a distinct frown. "Thank you, but no, Venetia."

  Was she mad?

  Betta smiled, pouring milk into glasses set on the long table.

  Father Driscoll rubbed his hands together. "I'll bet you didn't know that Mrs. Newlwyn is quite a cook. She's won blue ribbons at the county fair and a lot of church benefits."

  In fact, the tall woman looked like a proverbial New England housewife, the type to pride herself in her homecooking talents.

  But why is she frowning? Venetia wondered.

  "Father Driscoll has quite an amusing sense of humor," Mrs. Newlwyn said.

  Venetia sat down next to the priest. "Sorry, but am I missing something here?"

  "Cooking is my pride and joy," the woman said, "and, yes, I've won many awards for my recipes. My New Hampshire Calm Casserole dish was even featured in Gourmet magazine several years ago."

  "'T'hat impressive, " Venetia said.

  "But my skills in the kitchen will go unused as long as Father Driscoll is responsible for filling the pantry."

  From the oven, Mrs. Newlwyn and Betta withdrew TV dinners and set them on the table.

  TV dinners? Venetia was surprised.

  "I'm always the bad guy," Driscoll said. "Sorry about the boring food, folks, but the diocesan coffers are quite tight. Every week I go to the grocery store in Wammsport and buy whatever's on sale: TV dinners, pork and beans, store brand soup, canned spaghetti."