Repressed Page 9

  “I hear you.” Petrosky pulled a photo of the bike from the folder. “Any idea who this belongs to? What’d your Magoo drive?”

  Randy shook his head.

  Drake gestured to the door, where little of the street was visible beyond the sidewalk immediately in front. “Never saw a car or bike, but that doesn’t mean much. Unless we went outside or took a break, we wouldn’t have seen a bike or a car anyway, and even then, we wouldn’t necessarily know whose it was. Lots of traffic out there.” He tapped the photo and leaned toward Petrosky. “So what’d he do?”

  “Not at liberty to say.”

  “Shit, that’s bad, ain’t it?” Drake straightened. “He was here, in my shop every couple months. Four times or so, total. If he was a bad guy, really bad, talking to Jenny …”

  “I’m going to need a list of his tattoos. Anything you recall.”

  Drake bent behind the counter, pulled out a few sheets of white paper and started sketching. “The last one Jenny did was a three-D piece on his back. A hand clawing out of his skin. He said it was for his kid. I figured it was a euphemism, you know? Flesh of my flesh kinda thing, a part of him escaping?”

  “So it was a child’s hand.” Though Petrosky’s face didn’t change, Morrison could feel the tension radiating from his corded muscles.

  A kid’s hand. Morrison’s stomach turned. Sick bastard wanted a child’s fingertips touching him at all times.

  “How about a number one?”

  Drake stopped sketching. “No, don’t recall that. I do remember a few other clowns. And a tent, yellow and purple. Kinda in the background here on his chest.” His pencil scratched away. “I know this here still needed more work, but I can’t really remember—”

  “He had that weird Mr. Ed one too, right?” Randy interjected.

  “Oh yeah.” He sketched another line, then another. A horse appeared in front of the tent, and in a moment it was clear it was dead, blood leaking from its eyes. Macabre. Sadistic. Maybe the rapist had taken part in Acosta’s killing, even if he’d just encouraged it. But if he was on board, why fight with his murderous spiked boot–wearing partner?

  “Creepy,” Petrosky said. The dead horse glared at them, bloody eyes dilated and aggressive as if ready to pull any passerby with him to the depths of hell.

  “Totally. But some people like that. The … dark stuff. And honestly, Jenny does it better, probably remembers more about his ink than I can.” He shook his head. “She won’t be back from Florida until Friday morning—down there for a friend’s funeral. Damn shame.”

  “We’ll come back.”

  It wouldn’t stand up in court, a composite so many years after the fact, but maybe Jenny would recall something that Zachary Reynolds hadn’t. What they really needed from Jenny was a closer copy of artwork she’d needled onto his gut in case there was an image even more telling than the clowns. Another picture that might give them a hint as to where he’d spend his time. Maybe he’d told Jenny something that would help. Maybe Jenny even had some insight into why he hadn’t finished his tattoos here—had something happened to spook him? Did he have a weakness they could exploit?

  Petrosky peered at the corner of the ceiling, then at another corner. “You guys have security tapes?”

  “Nothing like that. Sorry.” Drake passed Petrosky the page he’d been working on and Petrosky slipped it into the folder. “Should I be worried? About Jenny?”

  Petrosky shook his head. “I think she's a little old for him.”

  “She’s only …” Drake’s eyes widened. “Oh fuck. My daughter, she … you think—”

  “How old?”

  “Seven.”

  So she would have been four or five back when their suspect was frequenting this place.

  “He show interest in her?” Petrosky asked with a subtle, aggravated twitch of his eye.

  “I …” Drake grimaced, almost snarled. “She came up after preschool one day when Jenny was inking him. Sat behind the counter with me. He looked a little too long, got me all upset. But I thought I was just overreacting, that he probably was trying to forget the pain and the needle. If I’d thought he was … well, looking like that, I would have fucking killed him myself.” He swallowed hard, face reddening to a shade deeper than the rose on Randy’s neck. “Not literally … you know what I mean.”

  Common. Ignore what you don’t expect—or what you fear the most. Morrison touched the cell in his pocket.

  “I would have felt the same,” Petrosky said. “Just watch your daughter close, sir, and enjoy her while you can. Time flies.”

  Morrison pictured Evie’s chubby cheeks, her smiling eyes. He should call Shannon again.

  Petrosky turned to head out but stopped short at the door and gestured to Drake’s nude arms. “Where’re your tattoos?”

  “I’ve always been afraid of needles.”

  “Interesting career choice.”

  Drake looked down. “I guess I thought it would help.”

  They canvassed the street and interviewed other business owners, but none had been there longer than two years. Dead end—just like the other four tattoo parlors nearby. Reynolds’s rapist had gotten his tattoos finished somewhere else—if he finished them at all.

  By the time Petrosky pulled into the precinct parking lot, Morrison’s head was throbbing. He massaged his aching temple. “Want to grab dinner? We can come back here and—”

  “You go home, California. I’ll pull the names and addresses of the folks who were in that strip mall around the time Mr. Magoo was getting his work done. Maybe one of them will recall something. Tomorrow we’ll see what other places one might go to get inked, since that dickhead probably got the work done somewhere else.”

  “Like the slang, Petrosky.”

  “You would.” Petrosky shut the car off. “And with the sheer number of tats, the tattoo shit itself might have become an addiction, the pain, the endorphins. And I think we’ve established that he has a hard time controlling his drives.”

  True enough. They’d talk to McCallum about it. “We’ve got time with the shrink tomorrow, right?” Maybe Morrison could even sneak in a few minutes if he got there early, ask about Shannon. Or get McCallum to call in a prescription for Shannon if she hadn’t called the doctor already. Hell she probably had—she might flake on a phone call, but not on her medications.

  “We’ve got McCallum’s four-thirty. Plenty of time to run around beforehand. Maybe we’ll have more leads by the time we get there.”

  “Maybe.” Morrison leaned his head against the seat.

  “Get out,” Petrosky barked so harshly that Morrison nearly jumped.

  “What?”

  “Go home, Cali.” Petrosky nodded to Morrison’s car, next to them in the parking lot. Had Petrosky parked next to his Fusion on purpose?

  Morrison reached for the door handle. Petrosky of all people should understand what it was like to just be … alone. Alone with your demons, the pain in your head, the kind that consumes you. The kind that takes bites out of you just when you thought you had a moment’s reprieve.

  “I don’t need—”

  “Go home and take a goddamn nap and just be happy you can sleep.” Petrosky pulled out his cigarettes and a lighter, but paused with his finger on the flint. “Everyone needs time to recharge, even do-gooders.” His eyes were far away, flickering with agitation and pain and a grief so intense it tore at Morrison’s gut, not the sharpness of a sudden stabbing, but a dull, old wound healed over but not gone. A wound as poignant as his own.

  Morrison drove home, preoccupied with the haunted look in Petrosky’s eyes. He’d hoped things were getting better—that Petrosky had found some new meaning in his life. God knows having Shannon and Evie had helped Morrison, and now with them away …

  Morrison inhaled and blew the breath out sharply as if to clear the thoughts. They would be fine—they were fine. But was Petrosky? There remained a nagging in the back of Morrison’s head that he was looking at someone just shy of rel
apse when he saw his partner, just shy of self-abuse, despite the fact that he’d surely deny it—addicts didn’t share easily. Morrison never shared at all.

  Morrison shut the car off in his driveway and let himself into the kitchen, the silence thick with foreboding. The cat was probably asleep somewhere. They should get another dog—a year already and he still missed that old girl. And though it hadn’t even been a day, he definitely missed his family.

  14

  The first three hours at home crawled by doing laundry, installing a cat door for Slash, taking a bath. And reading Edgar Allan Poe. He’d read hundreds of books, maybe thousands over the course of his studies as an English Major, but there was something about Poe that filled some empty place inside him with an almost tangible serenity. The darkness on those pages made him feel almost normal, not alone, like another soul was there in his head with him. When he got to The Tell-Tale Heart, he relished the obsession—the madness. At least he could reasonably tell himself “Hey, I’m not that crazy” when he worried about his wife for the umpteenth time.

  But by the time the bathwater had cooled, the apprehensive whispers in his mind had grown to a dull roar. Why hadn’t she called back yet? It was well past time for her to have settled into a hotel.

  I can do this, Morrison. And to think that I needed a crutch, even if that crutch was just having you home with me, is ridiculous …

  She didn't need him checking up on her, didn’t want his help. He should have taken her at her word. But goddammit, she could call just to ease his mind, just to squash the thoughts running through his brain.

  Has she been in an accident?

  Have the meds worn off and left her with horrible fantasies on a dark road somewhere?

  No, antidepressants can’t wear off that quickly.

  Maybe she’d taken Evie and leapt from an overpass.

  His heart frantic, he tried her cell again. Again, no answer. He tossed the phone on the bed and closed his eyes.

  She’s showing herself that she doesn’t need me.

  He moved on to distraction. It should have been easier, but playing the guitar without Evie on his lap or on the bed beside him made the experience feel empty—like he’d never played before her birth, as if every song he’d ever strummed had always been meant for her. He tried to embrace this and accept his preoccupation—turn it into a new song—but his heart was still jerking around in his chest, choking his voice. Sit ups, pull ups, nothing took away his agitation. And when he closed his eyes to meditate, he saw the memorial tattoo at Drake’s shop, and it suddenly looked like Evie. He saw himself getting her face needled into his forearm, like Petrosky might want to do for Julie, and his stomach turned so that he almost wanted to vomit the idea—and the quinoa he’d eaten. Evie wasn’t a memorial. She was fine. Shannon was fine.

  And then Shannon came to him, shaky but louder, the panicked tears evident in her voice: Sometimes I just want to drop her to see what will happen. Or toss her out the car window. I went to the pediatrician this week and I crossed an overpass and thought for too long about what it might be like to drive over the guardrail.

  He felt half fucking insane. And more than that, he was being obsessive, more so with every hour that passed.

  In the tumultuous quiet, the whispers began: They’re not home. No one will ever know. Just this once. You’ll be happy.

  The habit was latent but not silent. It would never be completely gone.

  He checked his phone again. No missed calls. No texts. No Shannon. No Evie. He dropped the phone onto the bed before he could dial. He trusted her; she had to know that. And she should be at the hotel any minute. Maybe it was taking extra long because she had to stop and nurse the baby. He wouldn’t know. He wasn’t there.

  Just like he hadn’t been there when she was considering tossing their child from the second story window.

  A vein in the crook of his leg throbbed wetly, remembering. It will make you forget about her. It will take away the worry. And no one will ever find out.

  I’ll know. I’ll never forget.

  He pulled out his journal and scribbled everything down: every thought, every whisper, every concern. Every desire, regret. Half an hour later, he was sweating and his hand was shaking, but it was better. He ripped the pages from the notebook, walked to the kitchen, and shoved them into the garbage disposal. This was not about his family. This was about him looking for an excuse to use.

  The motor in the bottom of the sink choked and sputtered like the heart of a man waking up the day after a bender with no spoon, no needle, and no drug. Morrison turned his back on the sink and stared at his shoes by the front door.

  Never too late to literally run away.

  The neighborhood streets pulsed with the reticent energy of an impending storm, though that surely was just him—the stars above shimmered clear and white, untainted by the murk of amorphous clouds. His breath echoed in his ears, hissing through his chest and into his lungs, and a discarded napkin skittered across his path, reminding him that even perfect things—like a moonlit run—were imperfect. Life was a struggle, perfect in its imperfection. It was a thought that Shannon would have called “zen bullshit” but it helped.

  The tightness in his stomach eased along with his thoughts of Shannon, and the case came into clearer focus. The case. What were they missing? The punctures, possibly from boots—nothing like that existed in the rape case they knew to be related, and they hadn’t found other murders with similar MOs. The rapist seemed to have a pattern—same type of victim, same T-shirt around the neck—but where the hell did this other guy come from? Was he a pedophile too? Or just a voyeur who got off on watching? They’d ask McCallum about that too—a profile should help.

  McCallum. Shannon. Morrison’s heart beat faster, and he didn’t think it was from his pace. He checked his phone again as he ran, then again. Oily sweat from his finger streaked the glass.

  Nothing.

  A breeze chilled the dew on his brow and rustled through the leaves like the whisper of waves against a shore. He inhaled and exhaled to the rhythm of the wind. His chest cooled and the film of concern cleared from his mind.

  The case. Think. He focused on his feet thumping against the pavement.

  The clowns were definitely weird. Savage shit. A guy who enjoyed feeling pain? Causing pain? That would explain the punctures, but the killer was a different guy. A night bird startled by his footfalls fluttered through the branches and something bigger leapt from one tree to another with the crackle of snapping twigs.

  He checked his phone again.

  Nothing.

  Sweat ran down his back and soaked his T-shirt. He ran harder over sidewalk and grass and pavement and tried to ignore the silent cell by listening to the treads of his shoes thumping against the earth. Rhythmic, measured. Grounded. By the time he circled the last block he’d managed to brush aside the urge to check the phone.

  She was fine. She was okay. And everything was as it should be.

  As he rounded the final corner to his house, his breath caught in his throat. Headlights flashed in the drive—his drive—and the porch lights caught the reds and blues, turning the front lawn into a lewd and gruesome display, like the reflections of fireworks on a corpse.

  She was dead. They were both dead.

  He ran.

  15

  He met Decantor halfway up the drive—Decantor’s arm out in front, a proverbial whoa boy. Morrison’s heart did not slow, but he brought his feet to a halt.

  “Is it Shannon? Evie?” He almost vomited the words onto Decantor’s shoes.

  “Shannon?” Decantor’s eyes widened. “Dear god man, of course not. I wondered why you were tearing up here like someone was chasing you.”

  She was okay. They were okay. She probably would have slapped him for the horrible thoughts he was having. He gulped in a breath.

  The tightness in his chest remained.

  Decantor lowered his hand, slower than seemed natural. Was Decantor trying to cal
m him down? Police training at its finest, maybe, but Morrison was unnerved by it and he tensed and released his toes to make sure the digits were still there, that he was still there.

  “Got a homicide out at Row and Luther, need to chat with you about her.”

  “Consultation?” Morrison and Petrosky primarily worked special cases—sex crimes and the like—but sometimes he talked through profiles with other detectives. But Decantor’s posture was hardly the relaxed shoulders of the guy he’d spoken to earlier that week, someone just interested in a chat. And Decantor had never come to the house about a case. Not once.

  “Not exactly a consultation,” Decantor said. “Can we go inside? It’s fucking cold tonight.”

  Morrison flexed his fingers. The spring breeze hadn’t seemed all that cold, but his hands were tingly and numb. “Yeah, of course. I’ll make coffee.”

  Decantor said nothing, just followed Morrison in through the unlocked front door, and Morrison suddenly regretted leaving the house open. Had he left the house open? Must have. He grabbed a dry dish towel from the drawer, green—Shannon’s favorite—and mopped the sweat from his face. Decantor didn’t move from his spot next to the counter.

  “So what’s the deal?” Morrison asked as he poured grounds into a filter, fighting to keep his voice low and steady.

  “Got a few questions about Natalie Bell.”

  Morrison paused, finger over the start button. The nanny? Fuck. Had Decantor said … homicide? Bell was dead?

  “You knew her, right?”

  “She interviewed here. We were looking for a nanny.” Morrison punched the button on the coffeepot and turned away from the counter.

  “When did you interview her?”

  “Two days ago. Monday at lunchtime.”

  “You and Shannon were both here?”

  “Yeah, you can give Shannon a call if you need a statement for the report.” Not that she’ll answer her phone. “She’ll be in Atlanta until next Wednesday.”