Skin Deep Page 8

  “Cyber-scaries are invisible,” Greg said. “Ghosts in the machine.”

  She said nothing and stared grimly over at the computer, Greg and Langston joining in the silence. They were wondering exactly what kind of case they had on their hands.

  Stacy Ebstein—the Tattoo Man’s first victim—lived in an upper-middle-class Henderson subdivision a few miles southwest of Green Valley, her tract home’s stucco walls, red tile roof, attached garage, and small rectangular lawn in neat conformity with the rest of the street’s master-planned properties.

  Nick rolled up to the house in his unmarked black Mustang and noticed the blinds were drawn against the bright morning sunshine.

  “Stacy’s sister has been staying with her,” he said. “She wasn’t too keen on our visit.”

  “Stacy or the sister?” Sara said from the passenger seat.

  “Stacy, sorry,” he said. “She claimed over the phone that it was because it’s the Jewish sabbath.”

  “Sounds like you think she might have a different reason.”

  Nick shrugged. “The sabbath ends after sundown. When I offered to drop by tonight instead of this morning, Stacy said she goes to bed early.”

  “Uh-huh.” Sara looked out at the house with its lowered blinds. “So is that when you poured on the Texas charm?”

  “Not this boy—though maybe I should’ve.” He thumbed his chest. “Actually, I get a call back from the sister about fifteen minutes after Stacy hangs up. She tells me it’s okay to come right over.”

  “Hope she bothered to inform Stacy.”

  Nick grinned. He swung into the driveway and pulled behind a lime Subaru wagon with New York plates. Sara unclipped her seat belt, then reached back for her evidence kit.

  They went up to the house, buzzed, waited. It took only a few seconds for the front door to open.

  The woman framed in the entry was thirtyish and very attractive. Cropped blond hair, blue eyes, slender figure. She had on olive capri cargo pants, a white tank top, and sandal wedges.

  “Officer Stokes?” she asked, offering a hand. “I’m Ellen Lerner, Stacy’s sister.”

  Nick was surprised by her youth. Her flat, worn-out tone over the telephone had led him to expect someone much older.

  “I’m not an officer, ma’am,” he said, and introduced Sara. “We’re with the forensics lab.”

  “Oh.” It was her turn to be surprised. “I must’ve misunderstood.”

  “Police get badges.” Nick tapped the CSI patch on his Windbreaker and smiled. “We get these patches.”

  She returned his smile and moved aside to let them through the door.

  The gloom within fell over them at once. Nick looked around the living room and realized its shades had blackout liners.

  Ellen read his expression and grew uncomfortable. “You’ll both have to excuse me,” she said. “It’s Stacy’s wish that the lights stay low.”

  “Don’t apologize,” Sara said. “We appreciate being able to visit on short notice.”

  Ellen nodded. “My sister was always an active, upbeat woman—we called her the family extrovert. She used to say her job at the hotel was to make sure people left there with bigger smiles than they had when they arrived.” She spread her hands as if to indicate the surrounding dimness. “Everything is different now.”

  “We won’t take up much of Stacy’s time,” Nick said. “If we could speak with her…”

  “Of course,” Ellen said. “Come with me—she’s in her room.”

  They followed her to a door at the end of a short hall. Their footsteps made no sound on the thick-napped carpeting.

  Ellen knocked on the door.

  “Yes?” softly from behind it.

  “The gentleman who called earlier is here,” Ellen said. “He’s with his partner, Ms. Sidle.”

  Ellen waited a moment with her hand on the doorknob, then opened the door and motioned them in. Nick breathed and took the lead without betraying perceptible hesitation.

  The room was on the small side and even darker than the other rooms. There was a bed against one wall, a dresser opposite, a corner bookshelf. That was it for the furniture, besides an armchair at the far end, facing the door.

  Spectral in the dimness, Stacy Ebstein sat on the chair with her back to the blackout shades.

  “Please stop right there,” she said.

  The CSIs stood just inside the door as it clicked shut behind them. Nick was thinking the air smelled of stale perfume. Then checked that. No, not perfume. Makeup.

  “I should have had chairs ready,” Stacy said. “You have nowhere to sit.”

  Nick couldn’t make out her features. Bangs covered her forehead, the hair falling over either side of her face in long, straight sheets.

  “That’s okay,” he said. “We don’t mind standing.”

  “No, it’s unacceptable,” she said. “I used to organize parties for hundreds of VIPs. You know of my career at the Starglow?”

  “Yes.”

  “I catered to A-list celebrities, top business executives,” she said. “Hundreds and hundreds of them.”

  “Ms. Ebstein—”

  “First names are fine… Nick, is it?”

  “Right.”

  She turned her head slightly toward Sara. “And, again, you’re… ?”

  “Sara Sidle.”

  “Nick and Sara, I’ll remember now,” Stacy Ebstein said. “I was once quite good with names.” She expelled a long sigh. “I wish I’d prepared chairs for the two of you.”

  Nick’s eyes had begun adjusting to the weak light. He could see the heavy makeup on her chin. It had a thick, caked-on look.

  “Stacy,” he said, “we’ve come to talk about what happened to you.”

  “I’ve spoken to the detectives. At the hospital after I was found and then here at my home. They asked their questions, and I answered those I could.”

  “I understand,” Nick said. “But there’ve been some new developments.”

  “So my sister insisted. She urged me to see you.”

  Nick said nothing.

  “These developments,” Stacy said. “Tell me about them, please.”

  He didn’t hesitate now. “Do you know a man named Quentin Dorset?”

  “No.”

  “He’s a retired district judge,” Nick said.

  “I don’t recognize the name.”

  “Is it possible he attended any of your events at the Starglow? Or even booked one?”

  “I couldn’t say. That’s all in the past, Nick.”

  “But would there be guest lists? Records we could check?”

  “I did keep them, yes. On my computer.”

  “Here or at the hotel?”

  “The hotel. You’d need to find out if anyone held on to them. It’s been months but seems so much longer ago. Why do you ask about the judge, Nick?”

  “He was abducted and held against his will. Almost certainly by the same person who kidnapped you.”

  “Was he… changed?”

  “Yes.”

  A momentary silence. “Oh,” she said. “I see.”

  “Judge Dorset is dead, Stacy,” Nick said. “We think he might have overdosed on a tranquilizer called Diprivan.”

  “The one the police say I was given.”

  “Yes.”

  Stacy Ebstein shifted in her chair. Nick noticed that she stayed very straight, barely moving her head, careful not to let the hair move away from her face. “I wish you hadn’t told me this news,” she said. “I find it quite distressful.”

  “We didn’t come here to upset you, Stacy.”

  “Well, you have. I don’t know why Ellen was so adamant that we meet. Possibly that other man can help you.”

  “Mitchell Noble, you mean?”

  “Yes. The shopkeeper. I don’t recall our crossing paths, either.”

  “We plan to speak with him.”

  “Good.”

  “But the more we know, the better,” Nick said. “The tattoo inks th
at were used on you and the judge might have some unique qualities. If we can identify them, there’s a chance it might lead us to the person responsible for these crimes.”

  “I wish you luck. Sincerely, Nick.”

  Nick paused. Easy does it. “There are comparisons we can make with our equipment,” he said, his voice calm and level. “A skin sample from you would be very useful.”

  She stiffened. “The detectives also wanted samples. They asked to take them at your laboratory. Didn’t you know?”

  “I did, Stacy—”

  “And are you aware I declined?”

  “It’s in their reports, yes. But the procedure’s quick and painless…”

  “So I’m expected to believe.” She grew more rigid in the chair, gripping its armrests. Nick saw a caddy of some kind on the right one but couldn’t discern what was on it. “I’m afraid you’ll have to leave now. My life is already difficult. Ellen shouldn’t have told you to come.”

  Nick glanced at Sara. She nodded slightly, picking up the ball. “Stacy, you can trust us,” she said. “We’d be very mindful of your privacy at the lab. But we could take the cultures right here if you prefer.” She raised her kit. “I’d do it myself—just a few small scrapings of skin. Nick wouldn’t even have to be in the room with us.”

  “Do you want to see my face?”

  Sara seemed not to know how to take her question.

  “I don’t necessarily mean for your tests,” Stacy said. “Say I refuse them. Would what I’ve become still matter?”

  “Of course, Stacy.”

  “Because what I am is a freak. Or, in politer terms, a human oddity. One that some people can’t resist gawking at out of curiosity and others force themselves not to turn away from out of pity. I haven’t decided which looks are harder to bear.” Her fingers were clawing into the armrest now. “What sort of person are you, I wonder? And Nick? But maybe it’s best some questions aren’t answered.”

  Sara had remained unruffled. “All we want is to find the person who’s responsible, Stacy. That’s why these epithelial samples are so important.”

  Stacy Ebstein stared at her across the room. After a long silence, she lifted a hand off the armrest and took what Nick thought might be a small round jar from the caddy. And something else… a ball?

  “Sara, there’s a dimmer knob on the wall to your right. Beside the door frame. Would you be so kind as to turn the light up, please?”

  Sara nodded. Cool, deliberate. She brightened the ceiling lamp.

  Nick could see the items she’d taken from the caddy now. The first object was, in fact, a jar. The second was not a ball but a natural sponge.

  “This cold cream works well to remove my makeup.” She screwed off the jar’s lid. “It just needs a minute to sit.”

  Nick felt his heart skip a beat as she pushed the hair back from her face, spread on the white emollient with her fingertips, and slowly, almost primly, used the sponge to wipe it away. He’d known what to expect—but the pictures were one thing.

  Reality was another.

  Stacy Ebstein’s face had been turned into a clock, or an eccentric Alice in Wonderland version of one, its black-ink numerals about where they belonged but somehow swimming toward the axis of the dial in varied sizes and styles. Almost, Nick thought, as if they’d been drawn freehand on a chalkboard. There was a thick, moonlike twelve on her forehead. A one and a two of different heights tilted together under her left eye. The balloon numbers three, four, and five tumbling down toward her jaw. On her chin was a rubbery six and then a normally proportioned seven under the right corner of her mouth. The top and bottom lines of the eight were missing so it resembled a cursive letter X on her lower right cheek. Above it, a dense number nine with bleeding edges bumped up against the elongated ten and eleven.

  The position of the clock hands showed the time of a quarter past three. Nick had remembered that from the photos taken by the sheriff’s deputies who’d found her roaming around Cave Lake in a daze. Remembered, too, that the hour and minute markings were accurately placed around the circumference of the dial.

  The dial, he thought. No, a woman’s face.

  Nick watched her lean forward in her chair, the jar and sponge returned to the caddy now, her hands back on the armrests.

  “I was raised an observant Jew,” she said. Her voice choked. “It was always my belief that tattoos were forbidden. And that anyone who wears them could not be interred in a Jewish cemetery.”

  The CSIs listened in silence.

  “My rabbi assured me the burial prohibition is a myth,” she said. “I was relieved to learn my body will not be refused a proper place of rest.”

  Nick exhaled. “Stacy… we’re trying to find a dangerous maniac. Help us before anyone else has to suffer.”

  She shook her head, her eyes wet. “The world embarrasses me, and I cannot dream that this watch exists and has no watchmaker,” she said. “Sara, I would be appreciative if you’d dim the lights again.”

  Sara had kept her hand on the knob. She turned it.

  “Thank you,” Stacy said in the restored gloom. She’d draped her hair back over her face. “Now I’d ask to be left alone.”

  Nick considered asking her to reconsider, but Sara touched his arm. “Let’s go,” she said. “She’s had enough.”

  Ellen Lerner was apologetic when she showed them out. It did nothing to remedy Nick’s disappointment as he got into the Mustang and drove back toward the southbound interstate. He’d wanted that skin culture.

  “I’m telling myself we should’ve pressed Stacy harder,” he said, and turned to Sara. “I understand you feeling sympathetic—”

  “I don’t.”

  “Hold on.” He stared at her across his seat. “I could’ve sworn it was you back there saying to leave her be.”

  “It was more like me wanting to make a graceful exit.” Sara shrugged “What was the point of her whole performance? She definitely had no intention of helping anyone.”

  “I wasn’t too specific over the phone with her sister. Stacy might’ve thought we’d have information for her.”

  “So? She finds out a man’s been killed. You don’t think that should persuade her to donate some skin cells? Instead, she tries to get a reaction out of us.”

  Nick whistled. “Whoa,” he said. “Those are some harsh words.”

  “I’d have knelt at Stacy Ebstein’s feet and wrung my hands to get her to cooperate. She’s had a terrible thing happen to her, but so have a lot of other people in this world… and what are we really asking of her?” Sara paused. “She’s too full of self-pity to give a damn about anyone. I just didn’t feel like wasting more time with the woman, her bad theater, and her Voltaire—Nick, you’d better watch where you’re going.”

  Nick looked out his windshield, saw he was precariously close to running a stoplight, and braked. The Mustang halted with a sudden lurch.

  He sat waiting for the light to turn green, then rolled silently on toward the intersection.

  5

  BOCKEM HAD SPOTTED the old coyote on his first day at the cabin. He was emptying groceries and supplies from his station wagon when it appeared down the ridge, its fur pale gray and natty, an observable stiffness in its gait as it moved closer to investigate his presence. This had been at high noon, with the bright, cold sun peaking in a crystalline blue sky, and Bockem had checked his watch on reflex to make sure he hadn’t somehow lost track of the time. Coyotes were crepuscular in their normal prowling habits and would often drowse away the daylight hours.

  As he’d carried his bags inside, the scrawny creature had been bold or desperate enough to come into open sight on the trail, although it had kept far enough away to make a safe retreat if he showed signs of hostility.

  Bockem supposed it must have gotten used to foraging through the trash when hikers and sightseers arrived to rent the cabin during the tourist season. But that was still more than a month off, and the coyote would have relied on its skills as a predat
or and an opportunistic scavenger to survive the winter. Its rangy leanness and scruffy coat indicated it had not fared well. The slowness of age and instincts dulled by contact with humans had done little for its prospects.

  After eating lunch, Bockem had left his table scraps in an open bag outside the kitchen window and watched as the coyote had loped up the mountain trail—pausing warily once or twice to sniff the wind with its triangular ears perked, then approaching the cabin to devour them. It had since lost much of its tentativeness, arriving early each morning on the same trail, hovering near the lodge for hours on end in eager anticipation of Bockem’s throwaways. But he still made it wait, consistently putting out the discarded morsels at one o’clock in the afternoon, as he had the day he’d arrived.

  Bockem held what the creature wanted, and his father had raised him to understand that nothing desired should ever be freely given. Patience only increased its value.

  He finished washing his scraper, gently scrubbing its teeth clean with a brush under the open tap. With the hot water running, he could still hear the sounds from the sitting room—the skin flapping rhythmically against the sides of the rotating drum he’d set up there.

  Putting his scraper aside to dry, Bockem sprayed the basin to rinse away the blood drippings, turned from the kitchen sink, and glanced out the window into the swirling, windblown dust of yet another day—his fourth on the isolated valley rim. It had been three hours since he’d returned to the lodge, and with noon already approaching, the coyote would be eyeing its small front yard from the near distance. He meant to reward its latest visit with a taste of something different.

  Bockem had wiped his hands on a dish towel and started toward the fleshing board and bucket when his cell phone vibrated against his leg. He reached into his pocket for it, read the name on the display, and frowned even while pressing the answer button.

  “Mr. Chenard,” he said. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “My apologies for the disturbance, should I have caused one,” Chenard said. “As you know, I browse certain galleries and keep an eye on current events. There was a breaking news story in the Las Vegas area—”

  “Keep it to yourself,” Bockem snapped. He flared with anger over Chenard’s carelessness. “You shouldn’t be calling now.”