Linwood Barclay - Parting Shot

The guy in the chair wanted a peek, too. “Man, please don’t do that to me.”

Duckworth took his phone back and asked his question again, in a slightly different way. “You any idea who might have done this?”

Mike had his own question. “Why would someone get a tatt like that?”

“It wasn’t voluntary,” Duckworth said.

Mike’s eyes went wide. “Someone did that without his permission?”

“That’s fuckin’ crazy,” Dolly said.

“How could someone sit still that long and let someone do that to him?” Mike wanted to know.

Duckworth felt he’d told them enough already. “So you don’t know whose work this might be?”

“I’d say a four-year-old did it,” Mike said. “That’s how bad it is. This is not the work of a professional. This is amateur night.”

“Do a lot of amateurs do tattoo work?”

“They sure as hell shouldn’t,” Mike said.

“You ever lend out your equipment?” Duckworth asked, nodding at the tattoo gun in Mike’s hand.

“God, no way. I’d never—” He stopped himself mid-sentence.

“What?”

“Dolly, when did we have that thing?”

“Thing?”

“That night someone got in here?”

Dolly thought. “That was, like, two weeks ago? I think.”

“You had a break-in?” Duckworth asked.

Mike shrugged and rolled his eyes. “Not exactly. We each thought the other person had locked up, and the back door got left open one night. At first we didn’t think anything had been stolen, but a couple days later I noticed one of the guns and some other stuff was missing. Figured it happened that night.”

“It was my bad,” Dolly said. “I shoulda checked.”

“How hard would it be for someone to work out how to do what you do?”

“Well, if they got the stuff they needed, they could do it,” Mike said. “They just couldn’t do a very good job. I mean, I’m an artist, you know?” He nodded toward the waterfall on the man’s shoulder.

“Sure.”

“You wouldn’t figure a guy who stole some paint and a few brushes could turn out the Mona Lisa , would you?”

Duckworth took another look at the tattoo on the customer’s arm. “No, I wouldn’t.”

“What I don’t get,” Dolly said, “is how you could do something like that without the guy lettin’ ya.”

“’Cause it hurts like a son of a bitch,” offered the man in the chair.

“Did you call the police about the tattoo gun that was stolen?” Duckworth asked.

Mike made a snorting noise. “Honestly, how much effort would the Promise Falls Police have put into that?”

Duckworth nodded, taking his point. He thought about Knight’s and asked, “You got cameras?”

Mike shook his head. “Hell, no. I got a lot of clientele wouldn’t even come in here if they knew they were on video.”

“Like bikers?”

“Bikers? No, I’m talking upstanding leaders of the community, housewives, people like that. People who think they’re too respectable.” He grinned. “They get tatts in some pretty interesting places. Kind of a challenge gettin’ at some of those places, let me tell you.”

Dolly smirked.

“Thanks for your time,” Duckworth said.

As he was heading for the door, the guy in the chair asked, “Who’s the Sean that sick fuck killed?”

“Workin’ on that,” the detective said.

Getting into his car, he thought it interesting that he was the only one who’d thought to ask.

Once behind the wheel, he took out his phone again and called up the picture he’d taken of the van parked in the driveway of Mrs. Beecham’s house. He memorized the plate, then called in to the communications division at the station. A woman answered.

“Shirley?” Duckworth said.

“Yes, it is. That you, Barry?”

“Yeah. I need you to run a plate for me.”

“Barry, when you gonna get one of those computers for your car like the real police have?”

“Are you ready?”

“Fire away.”

He closed his eyes and read off the combination of letters and numbers.

“Hang on,” Shirley said. He could hear her typing in the background. “Okay, got it.”

“Who does it belong to?”

“Van’s registered to a Norma Howton.”

“Spell that last name?”

She did.

“So, not Norma Lastman,” Duckworth said.

“Nope,” Shirley said. “Anything else I can do for you today? Book you a cruise to Tahiti? Order you a pizza?”

“No, that’ll do,” Duckworth said.

“You’re gonna have to buy me a new phone,” Jeremy Pilford told me from the passenger seat.

We were pulling out of the parking lot of the burger place. I glanced in my rear-view to see Jeremy’s girlfriend backing out of her spot in her red Miata, grinding the gears slightly as she did so.

“She’s something,” I said.

“Huh?”

“Charlene. She seems to believe in you.”

“Yeah, well.”

“Been friends a long time?”

“Pretty much forever, I guess.”

“Girlfriend?”

He gave me a pained look. “You already asked me the going-steady question.”

“Which you really didn’t answer.”

“You’re like my mom. You’re all hung up on labels. Is she a girl friend. She’s a friend. Sometimes we’re closer than at other times.”

“Regardless of how close you are right now, you shouldn’t have called her or let her know where you are.”

“What?”

“I think the word you were looking for there is ‘pardon.’ Or perhaps a question, along the lines of, oh, Mr. Weaver, why would you say that?”

“You think you’re funny, don’t you?” Jeremy asked.

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m saving my best stuff for later. Anyway, since you’re not going to ask, I’ll tell you. You’ve got a target on your back. Now, if you want to be stupid and let the world know where you are, that’s one thing. But when you invited Charlene up here to join you, you put her at risk. You want to get her killed?”

He shot me a look. “No one’s going to kill me.”

“Let’s hope not.”

“I’m not scared.”

It was my turn to shoot him a look. “Then what was that I saw earlier?”

“When?”

“On the porch of Ms. Plimpton’s house.”

“Huh?”

“The look in your eyes. I know what I saw.”

“What did you see?”

“You looked scared to me.”

“Yeah, right. I’m fucking shaking in my boots.”

“Fine,” I said. “Look, I know the whole world’s been calling you a big baby and you want to show that you’re not. I get that. But the fact is, a little bit of fear is a good thing. It makes you smarter. It makes you pay attention. Now, all I’m being hired to do is have a look at your level of security, and right now I’d say it’s zero. A good portion of the blame goes to you and your mother for being too free with what you say online. You might as well have put a billboard on your grandmother’s front lawn advertising your arrival. Part of you wants to bust out and party, but part of you knows you may actually be in danger. That’s what I saw when I looked at you on the porch.”

Jeremy didn’t say anything for several seconds. “Maybe. But only a little.”

“Whatever. You’re a soldier.”

“You gonna buy me a new phone?”

“No.”

He thought about that. “Bob will.”

“There you go. I thought you didn’t like him.”

Jeremy looked out his window. “I don’t know. I guess he’s okay.”

“What’s his story?”

“He’s some big real-estate guy. Has properties all over the place. He’s always doing deals. Always waiting for the really, really big one, like the one he did with, you know.”