'Yes!' Albrecht said. He looked around. 'Sorry. That was loud, wasn't it?'
Byrne smiled. 'Not in this place.'
'Well, when I saw that — at the ripe old age of seven — I saw the possibilities of making movies about regular people. Nothing bores me more than celebrity. I never watch television.'
'That movie seems a little highbrow for a kid,' Byrne said.
Albrecht downed a second espresso, nodded. 'Like I said, my dad was big into the arts. I think we saw that film at a fundraiser. I was never the same afterwards. I was especially impressed with the music. The possibilities of sound editing in particular.'
Jessica suddenly made the connection. 'Wait a minute. Your father was Jonas Albrecht?'
'Yes.'
For more than twenty-five years Jonas Albrecht had been a force of nature in Philadelphia arts, business, and politics — one of the directors of the prestigious Pennsylvania Society. He was a wealthy man, having made his fortune in real estate. He founded a number of organizations, and was deeply involved with the Philadelphia Orchestra until he was tragically killed in a violent carjacking in 2003. Jessica had been on the force at the time, but it was before she had joined the homicide unit. She wasn't sure if the case had ever been closed.
'It was a terrible tragedy,' Byrne said. 'We're sorry for your loss.'
Albrecht nodded. 'Thank you.'
We are the sum of our experiences, Jessica thought. David Albrecht might not be doing what he was doing now if it had not been for the terrible tragedy that had befallen his father. It had taken Jessica a long time to realize that, if it were not for her own life's tragedies, among which was her brother Michael's death in Kuwait in 1991, her life might have taken another path. She had been headed to law school until that fateful day. It was Michael who had been going to follow in their father's footsteps and join the force. Life takes its turns.
While Byrne and David Albrecht talked documentary film — not one of Jessica's strong suits, she'd been halfway through This is Spinal Tap before she'd realized it was a spoof — she got on her iPhone, did a search for tattoo parlors in Philadelphia. She called a few of them and was told that they did not handle things like temporary tattoos. The last place she called, an emporium on South Street, mentioned a parlor that had recently opened on Chestnut, a place called Ephemera. The girl said they did temporary tattooing and had a good reputation.
Ephemera was on the second floor of a row house converted into retail space. The first floor was a retail shop selling Asian specialty foods.
While David Albrecht shot some exteriors of the building, Jessica and Byrne climbed the narrow stairwell, opened the frosted-glass door.
The front parlor was lit with dozens of candles. The walls were covered in tapestries of magenta and gold. There was no furniture, no stools, just pillows. It smelled of rich incense. There were no customers in the waiting area.
A few moments later a woman walked through the curtains and greeted them. She was Indian, elfin and delicate, about forty. She wore a turquoise silk kurti and black slacks. 'My name is Dalaja,' she said. 'How may I help you?'
Jessica took out her ID, showed it to the woman. She then introduced herself and Byrne.
'Is there something wrong?' Dalaja asked.
'No,' Jessica said. 'We just have a couple of questions, if you have a few moments.'
'Yes, of course.'
Dalaja gestured to the large pillows in front of the window overlooking Chestnut Street. Jessica and Byrne sat down. Well, sat was a loose term for Byrne's action. For a man his size, the best Byrne could do was aim himself at the pillow, then fall onto it.
'Would you like some tea?' the woman asked when they were settled.
'I'm fine, thanks,' Jessica said.
'Would a cup of Masala chai be too much trouble?' Byrne asked.
The woman smiled. 'Not at all. But it will take a few minutes.'
'No problem.'
Dalaja disappeared into the back room.
'Masala chai?' Jessica asked softly.
'What about it?'
'Do you have some sort of secret life I don't know about?'
'Well, if I told you it wouldn't be secret, would it?'
Jessica looked around the room. There were glass shelves on the far wall, each featuring a stack of brightly hued clothing. Another glass rack held carved artifacts and jewelry. The sound of modern Indian music floated softly from behind the curtain.
The woman soon emerged from the back room, sat on a large pillow opposite them. She was so light that she barely made an impression on the pillow. It was as if she floated above it. 'The tea will be ready shortly.'
'Thanks,' Byrne said.
'First, if you don't mind, can you tell me what you do here?' Jessica asked.
'This is a Mehndi parlor.'
'Could you spell that for me?' Jessica asked.
Dalaja did, giving her a few alternate spellings. Jessica wrote it all down. 'I'm not sure I know what that means.'
'Mehndi is a type of skin decoration practiced throughout South Asia, Southeast Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa.'
'These are temporary tattoos?'
'Technically no. Tattoos, by definition, are permanent, applied under the skin. Mehndi is temporary, and rests atop the skin.'
'What is it made out of?'
'Mehndi is applied with henna. It is mostly drawn on the palms of the hands and the feet, where the levels of keratin in the skin are highest.'
'And how long does it last?'
'Anywhere from a few days to a few months, depending on the henna paste and where the decoration is placed on the body.'
A young Indian woman came out of the back with a cup of tea on an ornate black lacquered tray. She was about nineteen, and wore traditional South Asian clothing. She was stunningly beautiful. Jessica went back to her notes, but, after a few seconds, noticed that the girl was still standing in front of them. Jesssica glanced at Byrne. He was looking at the girl with his mouth open, not moving, not speaking. She was that beautiful.
'Kevin.'
'Right,' he said finally, closing his mouth and taking the cup and saucer. 'Thank you.'
The girl smiled and, without a word, withdrew to the back room.
When she was gone, their hostess reached onto a nearby table and picked up a beautifully bound leather notebook. She handed the book to Jessica, who riffled the pages. The designs were intricate and skillfully drawn. Page after page of complex artwork in a rainbow of colors, drawn mostly on hands and feet.
'I'm afraid what we're inquiring about is a little different,' Jessica said. 'A little less… ornate.'
'I see.'
Jessica then caught the aroma of the tea — ginger and honey — and wished she had taken the woman up on her offer.
'May I show you a photograph?' Jessica asked.
'By all means.'
Jessica pulled out her iPhone, enlarged the photograph of the lion tattoo on Kenneth Beckman's finger.
'Oh, I see,' the woman said. 'This is different.'
'Do you know what it is?'
Dalaja nodded. 'This is very small, is it not?'
'Yes,' Jessica said. 'Maybe one inch long.'
'It appears to be a style of temporary body art called a transfer. Relatively inexpensive. And the quality, well…'
It was true. By comparison with the photographs in the leather-bound notebook the lion tattoo looked like it had been drawn with a crayon.
'I take it you do not offer this service or sell items like this,' Jessica said.
'We do not. But I believe I can point you in the right direction.'
'That would be great.'
'If you will excuse me for a moment.'
The woman rose, seemingly without effort. She stepped into the back room. She returned a few minutes later with pages from a color printer.
'I believe this is what you are looking for.'
She handed a page to Jessica. On it was an exact replica of the lion transfer
tattoo.
'Wow,' Jessica said. 'That's it.'
Dalaja handed her a second sheet. 'At the top is the website from which I downloaded the image. There are ten others here on the page, but the first company, called World Ink, is the largest. I did not find that exact image on any of the others, but that is not to say it is not sold elsewhere.'
Jessica and Byrne got to their feet.
'The chai was delicious,' Byrne said. 'Thanks very much.'
'You are most welcome,' the woman replied. 'Is there anything else I can do for you?'
'I believe that is it for now,' Jessica said.
'Then, for now, alvida.' She spun on her heels and walked toward the back room without making a sound.
Back at the Roundhouse, Jessica got on the Internet and visited World Ink. In addition to transfer tattoos, the company sold a lot of specialty items, such as pocket calendars, paint sheets, and customized scratch-and-win cards.
But it was the stock tattoos in which Jessica was interested. And they had hundreds, maybe thousands of designs. Angels, cars, flags, flowers, sports, holiday-themed, myth and fairy-tale, as well as religious and tribal symbols.
Six pages deep into the online catalog she found the lion design. It was in a collection called TinyToos, and was a perfect match. She took out her cellphone, clicked over to the photograph of Kenneth Beckman's body. There could be no doubt. Unless the victim had put this tattoo on himself — and Jessica had a problem seeing Beckman doing this, it seemed inconsistent with his personality — someone had done it for him. Quite possibly the person who'd strangled and mutilated him.
Byrne already had three calls in to Sharon Beckman to ask if her husband had a tattoo on his finger.
Jessica got on the phone to World Ink, and after a few minutes of press one, press five, press two, she pressed 0 until a human being picked up the phone. She identified herself and in short order was passed over to the website-catalog sales manager.
Jessica explained the bare minimum. After a little hemming and hawing, the man told her that they would be happy to help, but he was going to have to get clearance and they would need some kind of request on paper. Jessica asked the man if a fax on a PPD letterhead would suffice, and he said it would. Jessica scratched a few more notes, hung up the phone. She caught Byrne's attention, gave him the highlights. She held up the photo of the lion tattoo.
'This design is exclusive to this company,' she said. 'It's an original design. That's not to say that our guy bought it from them, or didn't duplicate it himself — the guy at World Ink said it was fairly easy to do with a scanner, PhotoShop, and the right supplies — but considering the way these tattoos are applied, I think it's a safe bet that Kenneth Beckman did not apply the tattoo himself. Even if it has nothing to do with the case, we can be pretty sure someone did it for him.'
'Like, for instance, our bad boy.'
'Could be. Now, if it was him, he might have placed an order online with this company. I'm going to fax them a request for a customer list, people who purchased this tattoo.'
'Do you think we'll need the DAs office on this?' Byrne asked.
'Maybe.'
'Let me call Mike Drummond and give him a heads-up.'
While Byrne made the call, Jessica printed off the tattoo of the lion. She heard laughter coming down the hall. She looked up to see Nicci Malone — a love-struck, schoolgirl-in-distress Nicci Malone — enter the duty room with Detective Russell Diaz.
Russell Diaz was the head of a newly formed tactical squad, part of the PPD's Special Investigations Unit, a job originally offered to Kevin Byrne, who had turned it down. The tactical unit was a sort of rapid-response team for high-profile cases involving special circumstances. Diaz had spent ten years with the FBI's Philadelphia field office, but had been traveling too much, he said, and joined the PPD to stay closer to his family. While in the FBI he had worked with Behavioral Science and had consulted with the homicide unit a number of times in the past few years.
Beyond that, Russell Diaz was a specimen. About six feet tall, cut from stone, close-cropped brunette hair, dreamy eyes. He was given to wearing those tight navy blue PPD T-shirts that showed off his biceps. Oddly enough, he seemed not to notice his impact on members of both the same and opposite sexes, along with everything in between. This made him even more appealing.
Tomorrow was his first tour in the new unit.
Diaz noticed Jessica, crossed the room, smiled. 'Hello, detective. Been a while.'
'Too long,' Jessica said. They shook hands. Jessica had worked with Diaz on a joint task force when she'd been in the auto-theft unit.
They had taken down an international ring, a gang shipping high-end cars to South America. 'Glad to have you on the team. How is Marta?'
Marta was Diaz's daughter. To Jessica's understanding she was some sort of musical prodigy. The fact that Diaz, long divorced, was raising her alone vaulted him from appealing to unbelievably adorable.
'She's great, thanks. Fourteen going on thirty.'
Jessica glanced down at the stack of papers and books in Diaz's grasp.
'What is this?' Jessica pointed at the book. Diaz handed it to her. It was a copy of Dante's Inferno.
'Just a little light reading,' Diaz said, with a smile.
Jessica thumbed through the book. It was anything but light reading. 'You read Italian?'
'Working on it. Marta is going to do her sophomore year in Italy, and I want to be able to sound hip to her friends.'
'Impressive.'
'Che c'и di nuovo?' Diaz asked.
Jessica smiled. 'Non molto.'
As far as she could tell, Diaz had asked her what was new and she'd told him 'not much.' Outside of swear words, that was about the extent of Jessica's Italian.
Byrne walked into the duty room. Jessica gestured him over. She introduced the two men.
'Kevin Byrne, Russell Diaz,' she said.
'Good to meet you,' Diaz said. 'I've heard a lot about you.'
'Likewise.'
They batted shoptalk around for a while until Diaz glanced at his watch. 'I'm due back at Arch Street to wrap a few things.' The Philadelphia FBI field office was at 6000 Arch. Diaz gathered his things, including the copy of Dante's Inferno. He put it all in his duffel, slung it over his broad shoulder. 'Drinks later?'
Standing behind Diaz, Nicci Malone nodded like a bobble-head doll.
Jessica and Byrne spent the next hour typing up the witness statements collected from the Federal Street scene, which amounted to little more than I don't know anything, I didn't hear anything, I didn't see anything.
'I think you should stay on that tattoo company,' Byrne said. 'I'll see if I can red-light the lab on the brand of paper used to gift-wrap Beckman's head.'
'Sounds like a plan,' Jessica said.
In the background the duty-room phone rang. Out of habit, Jessica and Byrne both looked at the assignment desk, which was positioned more or less in the middle of the cluttered room. Nick Palladino was up on the wheel. They saw him reach into the desk for a notification form, which could only mean one thing.
The homicide unit was contacted every time there was a suspicious death. Some turned out to be accidents, some turned out to be suicides. But every time a non-hospital, non-hospice death occurred, anywhere in the county of Philadelphia, only one phone rang.
Jessica and Byrne turned their attention back to the case, to each other. Or tried to.
A few minutes later, out of the corner of her eye, Jessica noticed someone crossing the duty room. It was Nick Palladino. He was heading straight for Jessica and Byrne, a dour look on his face. For the most part, Dino was a pretty affable guy, even-tempered, at least for a South Philly Italian. Except when he was on a job. Then he was all business.
This was one of those times.
'Please don't tell me we have another body on this case,' Jessica said. 'We don't have another body on this case, do we, Dino?'
'No,' Nick Palladino said, slipping on his coat. 'We don't.'
He grabbed a set of keys off the rack, along with a two-way handset. 'We have two.'
Chapter 17
Lucy Doucette made the six blocks in just under four minutes. It might have been a record. On the way she outpaced two SEPTA buses and just barely dodged an SUV that ran the light on Eighteenth Street. She'd been dodging traffic since she was three. It didn't slow her down a bit.
The address was a three-story brick building off Cherry Street. A small plaque next to the door identified it as Tillman Towers. It was hardly a tower. A rusted air conditioner hung precariously overhead; the steps leading up to the door looked to be leaning at a ten-degree angle to the right. She looked at the bottom of the plaque. It said entrance to 106 around back. She walked down an alley, turned the corner and saw a small door, painted red. On it was a symbol that matched the symbol on the card, a highly stylized golden key.
She looked for a buzzer or doorbell and, seeing none, pushed on the door. It opened. Ahead was a long dimly lit hallway.
Lucy started down the corridor, surrounded by the smells of old buildings — bacon fat, wet dog, fruity room deodorizers, with top notes of soiled diaper. She had long ago developed a keen sense of smell — it was something that really helped in her business: sometimes some really funky things lurked in the craziest places in hotel rooms, and being able to root them out and dispose of them, by any means necessary, was a real plus.
When she got to number 106 at the end of the hallway the door was slightly ajar. She knocked on the door jamb and, out of longingrained habit, almost called out 'Housekeeping.' She stopped herself at the last second.
She knocked again. 'Hello?'
No response.
She took a deep breath and stepped into the room.
The space was small and cramped, with stacks of old leather-bound books in the corners reaching nearly to the ceiling. In the center were two upholstered chairs of differing style and vintage. In here she tasted long-boiled coffee on the back of her tongue.
'Hello.' The voice came from behind her.
Lucy spun around, her heart leaping. Behind her stood a compact man somewhere in his forties or fifties. He was of average height, but lean and wiry. His white shirt, which had yellowed around the collar and cuffs, appeared to be a few sizes too large. His navy blue suit coat was shiny and worn, his shoes dusty. But what struck Lucy most were his eyes. He had the dark, shiny eyes of a fierce terrier.
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