The Rook (21 page)

45

The grammatically incorrect and utterly moronic sign outside Dragon’s Tail Tattooing read, “Tattoo’s! Done while you wait.” Tessa just shook her head. She stood for a moment trying to decide if she really wanted to go through with this. Especially here.

Tangy smoke met her at the door. She recognized the smell, and it didn’t come from a cigarette. Harsh, driving music pulsed toward her from inside the studio. One of her favorite bands. DeathNail 13. At least that was cool.

Lien-hua’s words from earlier in the day came back to her:
We
do what we have to do.

She stepped inside, and a looming greasy-haired guy behind the counter turned down the music and snuffed out what he’d been smoking. He wore a T-shirt that read: “Drunk chicks dig me.” Tessa could hardly believe she was going to trust her arm to someone like this, especially when she saw his eyes crawl across her body, lingering in all the places she would’ve expected a guy wearing his T-shirt to stare.

“Should I buy you a camera?” she asked.

“Huh?”

“To take a picture. That what you want?” She gave him the finger.

“Take a picture of this, jerk.”

Someone shrouded in a pool of shadows in the left-hand corner of the room laughed. She couldn’t make out his face but saw that he was wearing shorts and flip-flops. He lit up a cigarette.

She surveyed the place. Stenciled pictures of tattoo artwork covered every spare inch of the walls. On the right, two open doorways led to the tattoo rooms. Inside each of them, she could see a sink, countertop, needles, and a tattoo machine waiting in the corner.

“So, then,” grumbled the guy behind the counter. “What can I do for you?”

“This is a tattoo parlor, isn’t it?”

“I’m afraid you’re going to need your parents’ permission. Did you bring your mommy with you?”

“My mom is dead.”

A flat silence. “Oh. Sorry.”

“Yeah, right.”

Enough with this guy.

She looked around the dingy, smoky room and saw that the guy in the corner had leaned forward. He looked like he was in his early twenties. Curly, blond, surfer hair. A little soul patch.

Glistening blue eyes.

“The music from before,” she said. “When I came in. Is that what you like? DeathNail 13?”

“Yeah. Their last CD rocked.” He had a cool, breezy, memorable voice.

“Which track did you like best: ‘Terrible Plight’ or ‘Don’t Open Your Eyes’?”

He took a drag from his cigarette. “‘Terrible Plight.’”

“Me too,” she said, then continued by quoting the song’s lyrics,

“‘Currents of pain beneath the golden sky. Just can’t seem to find solid ground.’”

“‘I’m always looking for a place to stand,’” he said. “‘Never finding the promiseland.’ Yeah. That song rocks.”

She tore her eyes off him. It wasn’t easy. “So,” she said to the greasy-haired guy who looked good to drunk girls. “Can you give me a tattoo, or do I have to go somewhere else. I have money.”

“Let’s see it.”

She laid the stack of twenties on the table. He plucked them up, flipped through them.

“Satisfied?”

“Lachlan,” said the surfer guy. “Give the girl a tattoo.”

“I don’t know if it’s enough money. Depends on what she wants.”

“It’s enough.” He took another slow drag. “Give her whatever she wants. You work for me, and I’m tired of paying you to just stand around there doing nothing.”

Lachlan mumbled something in Spanish, reached below the counter, and pulled out a beat-up clipboard with a blank form on it. “So,”

he said. “You’re eighteen or older, right? Just say ‘right.’”

“Right.”

“Good.”

“Sign this. It says that if you die from infection you can’t sue us.”

“Oh,” said Tessa. “And does that happen often, then? Dead people suing you?”

The guy in the corner laughed his easy free laugh, and Tessa tossed him a smile. He tipped his cigarette to her, sending a curl of smoke in her direction.

“Just sign it,” said Lachlan.

She jotted down the day’s date, her contact info, and then scribbled an indecipherable name across the bottom of the form. Slid it back to him. Without even looking at it, Lachlan yanked the paper off the clipboard, pulled open a file drawer, and stuffed it inside.

She glanced at the blond guy in the corner. “Thanks.”

“For what?”

“Letting me have whatever I want.”

He seemed to consider her words for a moment. “Don’t mention it. I’m Riker.”

“That your first name or your last name?”

“It’s what people call me. What do they call you?”

She thought fast. She didn’t want to give him her real name.

“Raven.” It felt like a slight betrayal to say it, but she covered her discomfort with a smile. “I like Edgar Allan Poe.”

“Cool. Well, pleasure to meet you, Raven.”

Oh, he was so cute. And twenty at least. And he was flirting with her. She felt a flutter of excitement ride through her and tried to keep it out of her reply. “Pleasure to meet you too, Riker.”

Then he leaned his chair against the wall again.

Lachlan stepped into the first tattoo room and twisted the chair beside the tattoo machine so that it faced Tessa. “So, where do you want it? Let me guess, your ankle? Back? Lotta girls are doing feet these days—”

“My arm.” She rolled up her sleeve.

He stepped to her and pinched her bicep loosely, gazing at it like a farmer might look into the mouth of a horse. “Here, on the bottom of the arm,” he said, “it’s one of the most painful places to get one. One of the most sensitive places on your body.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

His eyes paused on her scar. “That looks pretty recent.”

“Couple months ago.”

“Still hurt?”

“Naw. It’s OK. That’s where I want it.” He was still feeling the skin on her arm. It was starting to creep her out.

“Around the scar?”

“No. Over it.” She pulled her arm away.

“Scars don’t hold color so good.”

She turned to Riker. “Is this guy any good?”

Riker let out a swirl of smoke and leaned forward, bringing his face out of the shadows once again. He really did have gorgeous eyes. “Gotta go to L.A. to find anyone better. Trust me. He’s the real deal. Just ignore the smell, you’ll be fine.”

“Very funny,” said Lachlan. Then he looked at Tessa. “So, OK.

You wanna cover up your scar.”

“How many different ways do I have to say the same thing?”

He walked over to the sets of needles spread across the countertop beside the sink. “All right, whatever. So what do you want? Lotus?

Butterfly? Heart? Tribal—”

“I want a raven.” She didn’t just want a raven because of the poem by Poe, but mainly because of Patrick, because he called her his little Raven sometimes and it made her feel special and loved and accepted in a quiet, private way. Since they were trying to draw closer to each other, she thought it might be cool to get a raven. She wasn’t sure he’d be happy about her getting a tattoo, but she was sure a raven would mean a lot to him.

“You want a raven?” said Lachlan.

She called over to Riker and let sarcasm color her words. “Is he always this good at listening?” It was a way of flirting with him, and it felt good.

“He’s on his A-game today.”

She rolled her eyes lightly. “Oh. Great.”

“Would you two knock it off?” said Lachlan. “I gotta get a visual of what she wants.”

“OK. Here’s what I want.” She pulled out the picture she’d printed at the Internet cafe and handed it to him.

He studied it. “Looks like a crow.”

“It’s a raven, OK? And I want it on the front of my arm with its tail feathers curling around the back to cover the scar that the serial killer gave me after I stabbed him with a pair of scissors—kind of like those lying right over there on the counter. That’s what I want.

Can you do the tat or do I need to go somewhere else?”

“I can do it. I’ll do it. Just chill.” Lachlan’s eyes traveled back and forth from Tessa to the scissors. “But a tat that big, wrapped around your arm like that, it’s gonna take me, I don’t know, maybe four or five hours if you want it done right.”

“I’m cool with that. I want it done right.”

“You want it filled in, like this picture? Some bluish highlights, maybe a little sliver of sunlight reflecting off the feathers, gray talons?”

“Exactly.”

Lachlan shrugged, pulled out a razor and some shaving cream, and started shaving the light, feathery hair from the area surrounding Tessa’s scar. “So be straight with me,” he said, somewhat hesitantly.

“You stabbed a serial killer?”

“Yes, I did.”

“For what?”

“Asking me too many stupid questions.”

Riker’s laughter cut through the room and landed in her lap, and she returned it with a smile. After a few moments, Lachlan started sketching out the raven that was about to land on her arm. And, as Tessa began anticipating the first prick of the first needle, she promised herself that she wasn’t going to cringe, no matter how much it hurt. Not with Riker watching her.

209

46

5:21 p.m.

2 hours 39 minutes until Cassandra’s deadline I was striking out. The only image of Cassandra on the Sherrod Aquarium’s surveillance video was the one of her entering through the employee’s door at 5:03 a.m. No footage of her abductor.

Solomon swung by my workspace to tell me he’d found a match on the dart. “It’s a Sabre 11, military issue. He could have gotten it at any of a dozen places in town. No prints.”

“What about the drug?”

“Tox screening is backed up. It could take a couple days.”

“We need it now. Get on their backs, and if they won’t put a rush on it, sic Ralph on them.”

He nodded and was about to leave when he added, “Oh, and by the way. We still don’t have anything solid on Cassandra’s family.

We confirmed her mom’s death, found strangled in an alley, but can’t find any record of her dad. He might be dead too. No way to tell.”

That was par for the course. “Thanks.”

Solomon left and I returned to my research on Cassandra’s grant, but that didn’t seem to lead anywhere helpful either. All I found were a few references to something called Project Rukh and some PDF files with additional information about magnetoencephalography technology and mucopolysaccharides, the jellylike substance that acts as a semiconductor in the shark’s electrosensory organs.

But how was it related to the case?
A way to improve an MEG’s
efficiency for a new generation of machines? Maybe trying to figure
out how sharks can sense and locate fish so you can find a way to
do it synthetically?

Possibly. But how that might be connected to her abduction I couldn’t even begin to guess. To use Lien-hua’s analogy, I needed to step out of the car. Or maybe look out a different window.

Since the aquarium was owned by Drake Enterprises, I thought maybe I could find out more about the grant by following the money backward.

Their website featured a prominent picture of the CEO, Victor Drake, and I recognized him as the man who’d almost knocked me down when I was leaving the aquarium earlier in the day. Even though I hadn’t heard of his company before this week, he’d apparently managed to build one of the leading biotech firms in the country.

But how is that relevant? How is it connected?

Biotech?

Shark research?

Magnetoencephalography?

They all seemed to have something to do with the fires and with finding Cassandra, but what?

It seemed like every step I took toward gathering more clues led me farther away from the heart of the case. I looked at the clock: 5:34

p.m. With each passing moment, the chances of finding Cassandra alive were shrinking and I was tense, so when the phone rang it jarred me. I grabbed it. “Pat here.”

“Dr. Bowers, it’s Aina Mendez. Agent Hawkins told us that Hunter might go after an inhabited building.”

“It’s possible.”

“Well, because of that, we brought the bomb squad to his apartment. They found traces of radioactive isotopes on Hunter’s clothing.”

“What?” I gasped.

“Cesium-137. It’s nasty stuff. Faint, but definitely present. It might have come from something as innocent as visiting a chemo lab at a hospital, or from someone working on a dirty bomb. The team is doing a more extensive sweep now, but I thought you should know.”

The case cycled through my head, facts tumbling over each other.

“Aina, have your team check the fire sites, see if they find any traces of the cesium there. Start with last night. I’m wondering if Hunter might have added something else that we didn’t think of to the paste he used as an accelerant. And hurry. We don’t have much time.”