Tattooed (12 page)

Brain drain.

Stop it, Drake.

He gave himself a shake, and threw a quick glance at Lamond. His former partner’s eyes were wide, his gaze fixed tightly on the victim’s face.

The pathologist examined the skull and dura. “No fractures, no sign of hemorrhage. Doesn’t look like someone hit her on the head.”

He finished the exam.

“One last thing.” He sliced through the skin on the neck, peeling it back to examine the bone and cartilage. “I’m not seeing any obvious fractures, but I’ll remove the neck and section it. We might see more under the microscope.”

“Can you make a guess at cause of death?” Ferguson asked.

Dr. Guthro shook his head. “No. The bullet clearly caused hemorrhaging, but whether she was dead before she was strangled, I can’t tell. The COD may be inconclusive.” He made a note on the whiteboard. “The forensic odontologist said he’d have a look at her teeth today. And if you get the dental records for your missing girl ASAP, we’ll see if we can at least get a match.”

“I’ll start tracking them down,” Ethan said.

“I’ll stay here while they look at the bog sections,” Ferguson said. The excavating team had brought in parts of the bog that had been under the body. “Lamond, you take the bullet to ballistics. Let me know what you find out. Ethan, be as quick as you can.”

Relief flashed in Lamond’s eyes that he didn’t have to stay to watch the sectioning of the victim’s neck.

He, on the other hand, wanted to know everything he could learn about the tattoo.

If the dental records matched those of Heather Rigby, then she had gotten the tattoo just before she disappeared.

And if that was the case…

They had just gotten their first break in seventeen years.

12

N
ervous.

Kenzie could pick up the vibes a mile away. Either this guy, Finn, had never had a tattoo or the last one was done by a scratcher.

“Hear you want a custom piece.” She led him back to her station. “What are you thinking?”

“I want a Foo Dog.” Kenzie bit back a smile. First a cat tattoo, now a dog tattoo. Haligonians loved their pets.

As if on cue, Foo jumped off his blanket and rushed over to check out her new client.

“A Foo Dog, huh?” she grinned. “Well, you can’t have mine.”

Finn crouched down and scratched Foo behind the ears. “Even though he seems to really like you.” Foo practically melted against this guy’s knee, his pink tongue peeking between his lips as he snorted his pleasure at Finn’s deft ear massage.

“I work with dogs,” Finn said. “I’m a dog walker.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. What’s your dog’s name?”

Kenzie smiled. “Foo Dog.”

He grinned. “Seriously?”

“Yeah.”

“He kind of looks like a Foo Dog.”

“Well, he’s got the attitude down, that’s for sure.” Foo Dogs were actually not dogs at all, but “Lions of Buddha.” They were symbols of protection and courage in both Chinese and Japanese Shinto mythology.

Finn stood, sliding a picture from his pocket. “I was thinking of something like this.” It wasn’t the standard tattoo design of a crawling Foo Dog. Rather, it was a picture of a stone Foo Dog statue, sitting on its haunches, a large paw on a sphere.

“Nice,” Kenzie said. “Where do you want it?”

Finn pointed to the back of his shoulder. “Right on my shoulder blade. So that he guards my back.”

“Right on.” She studied the posture of the statue. It was static, stolid. If it wasn’t positioned just right, it would look like he had a postage stamp stuck on his back. “Can you turn around and take off your shirt?”

Finn flushed. “Sure.” He pulled his T-shirt over his head, and turned around, revealing a broad, smooth back tapering down to narrow hips. Perfect material.

“The Foo Dog will look awesome on your shoulder blade. Although you know what would look even better?”

“No.”

“Two. Traditionally, there is a pair of Foo Dogs that guard the entrance to sacred buildings and houses. If you had the male on one side,” she ran her palm over one shoulder blade, “and the female on the other, they would symbolically guard your soul—and they would be symmetrical.”

She felt his shoulders tense under her hand. “Uh…I don’t know. I’m not sure I’m ready to make that commitment.”

He had completely unmarked skin. She bet this was his first tattoo. “You want to be sure.” She had a hunch that once he saw the design, he’d be in for both, but she would never push a client. “It will be yours for life.” Too often she’d seen clients jump into a tattoo they would later regret. “I’m thinking it will cover about this much,” Kenzie circled her finger on his skin.

“Maybe a bit smaller?”

He isn’t ready.
“You sure you want to do this?”

“Yeah.” His gaze was steady. Good. Nothing worse than having a client who started sweating halfway through the tattoo because they had changed their mind. Once the ink was in, it was in. Couldn’t use an eraser on it.

“You want to make sure it looks good in ten, twenty years. If you do it too small, you won’t get the detail,” she said. “And over time the lines will fade, so you want to make sure the tattoo isn’t so small it just looks like a blob.” He still looked uncertain. “Look, I’ll show you.” She lifted the edge of her tank top and pulled down the waistband of her cargo pants to reveal her left hip. On it was a brilliant blue-and-green Foo Dog, curving around her body, crawling toward her heart.

“Wow,” Finn said. “Very cool.”

“You see the detail in this? You are going to lose all that if you shrink it down.”

She pulled her tank back over her hip.

“So if it’s too small it will look like this?” He pointed to her chest.

What the—?
She may have her insecurities, but not with her breasts.

Then she grinned. He was pointing to the silkscreen on her tank top. It was a picture of the back of the cover from the Talking Heads
Remain in Light
album. The four members of the group were masked with red blocks painted over their faces. The overall effect was to render their feature indistinguishable. Blobs.

“Yeah. Exactly.” She pulled out her sketchbook. “Give me twenty minutes to come up with something.”

It took about twenty-five minutes, but she was happy with the results. “That’s amazing,” Finn said. She had sketched a Foo Dog with a paw pushing off a sphere, its mane curling and flowing, its snout open in a protective snarl. Instead of the dog sitting—which looked too blocklike to her—she drew the dog springing from its haunches, the sphere about to roll away.

“Trust me, it’s going to rock!” Energy charged her blood. She had outdone herself with the design and she had the perfect canvas to work on. She couldn’t wait to get started.

She traced the design onto transfer paper. “Okay, now we are going to put the design on your shoulder. So you need to take off your shirt.”

He yanked off his shirt, so excited that the shirt whipped over his head. They both grinned. Kenzie gloved, then wiped his shoulder blade with green soap and shaved the skin with a razor. “This will make sure that the lines are really smooth,” she said. She wiped the skin down again and applied a generous coating of adherent. “This will make the stencil stick.” Now was the moment of truth. She had that feeling of sick excitement that comes when you know something you’ve created is really hot. She pressed the stencil on Finn’s shoulder blade, patted it down and peeled it off.

“Nice,” she breathed. “Take a look.” She grabbed his arm and led him to the full-length mirror hanging on the wall. “Don’t you think the size works?” she asked, handing him a mirror so he could see his reflection.

Finn stared at his stenciled shoulder blade, angling the mirror back and forth. “Yeah,” he said. “I do. I think it will be great.” He smiled. “Bring it on!”

While she was waiting for the stencil to dry, she selected the needles and inks. Green, blue, a touch of yellow in the eyes…

“I just want black with some shading,” Finn said.

“You sure?”

“Yeah. I want it really simple. Kind of pure.”

She mentally adjusted her vision of the tattoo. Yeah, she could see that. It would work. And it would fit her client’s comfort level. He wasn’t screaming “collector.”

“Right on,” she said. She disinfected the chair and laid protective plastic on the surface. “Have a seat. And make sure you are comfortable. This will take a couple of hours.”

Finn straddled the chair, resting his arms on the back. She put together her tattoo gun, opening the needle in front of him and attaching it to the bar in the gun. Then she slid the needle tube over it. She adjusted it until just the tip of the needle could be seen from the edge of the tube. Then she bagged the motor, sealing it with a rubber band.

“We’ll start with the outline, Finn.” She patted down his shoulder blade, removing excess transfer ink, and then smoothed a coating of Vaseline over his skin. She dipped the needle into a cap of black ink, drawing up a bit of ink into the tube. With her right hand, she stretched the left side of the tattoo, and then began the outline.

“You’re a lefty,” Finn said.

“Uh-huh.”

“So’m I.”

“Cool.” She wiped off excess ink, and began another line. “Your skin loves ink, by the way.”

“What do you mean?”

“For some people, their bodies don’t like ink. But the ink goes really smoothly in you. I’m the same way.”

“When did you get your first tattoo?”

“I was sixteen.”

“You serious?”

“Uh-huh. My mother almost killed me.”

“What was it?”

“The usual. A skull.” The lie came so naturally now that she almost forgot that the tattoo had not been a skull.

“Can I see it?”

She wiped off more ink, and turned to refill the tube. “No. I had it covered up. It was bad.”

“Who did it?”

She got asked about her first tattoo all the time by new clients. Years ago, she could barely talk about it, but she soon was able to gloss over it and move on. But today, she felt her shoulders tensing. Maybe because she was back in Halifax. Glad that Finn couldn’t see her face, she said, “An old boyfriend.” She kept her tone cool. Even though she liked Finn, this was “no fly” territory.

The conversation moved on to Finn’s work. The crazy antics of the dogs he walked. He laughed out loud at her stories about Foo. They talked about creating things with their hands—how he loved renovating and transforming houses. “A bit like tattooing, I guess,” he said.

She felt a spark of excitement. This guy
got
her work, her art. Her soul. “Tattooing is about personal transformation for so many of my clients.” She realized, at the end of their three-hour session, that she hadn’t enjoyed talking with a guy so much in a long time. “Okay, we are done. And it rocks.” She wiped away the extra ink and put down her tattoo gun. “Wanna take a look?”

Finn got off the chair and checked out the tattoo in the mirror. “Wow. You are a true artist.”

A warm flush prickled Kenzie’s skin.

She studied his tattoo. His shoulders were well-muscled, and the poised power of the dog, ready to spring across his back, blew her away.

“Can I take a picture?” she asked. “I want to add it to my collection of favorites.”

“Sure.”

Yoshi came over to admire Kenzie’s work while she rooted in her bag for her camera. “Very fine work, Kenzie. Horifuyu would be pleased.”

“Thanks.” She grinned. “I was inspired. Great concept—”
great canvas;
she wouldn’t say those words in front of Finn “—and the ink went in real smooth.” She took a couple of pictures.

“Here, let me take one of you together,” Yoshi said.

Kenzie stood next to Finn. He slung an arm around her shoulders—“My good arm,” he joked—and Yoshi snapped the shots. “Give me your email and I’ll send them to you.”

“Thanks.”

“Maybe I should send Foo over for a little exercise. It’s too easy for him to get fat here.” The words popped out, but as she spoke them, she realized it was a great idea.

Finn eyed Foo, who returned his gaze with lazy interest. “Yeah, I think he’d be good with the other dogs.”

“How about tomorrow?” She applied some lotion to his tattoo and covered it up. “You can put your shirt on.”

He pulled it over his head. “Sounds good. Where do you want me to pick him up?”

“I’ll be here by ten tomorrow morning.”

“See you then.”

It felt like a date.

It’s for Foo. Not you.

Maybe.

Maybe not.